INTERVIEW: Haleon’s immediate impact
Promotional Features top-postPosted by: Dental Design 13th December 2022
This past summer, GSK’s consumer healthcare division demerged from the company, becoming its own separate entity: Haleon. Tess Player, global healthcare professional lead, speaks with us about the transition and how the new standalone company is already living up to its promise to focus on everyday health with humanity in mind
How was the transition to Haleon and what have been the biggest challenges so far?
It’s been busy. What sets us apart now is that we’re an everyday health company with a focus on humanity. We’re able to make decisions and execute some of those things quicker than before. But we do have to remember that we are only a few months old and so the current journey we’re on is one to build awareness of the Haleon brand.
Much of the work that we do with our brands that everybody knows, such as Sensodyne and Aquafresh, continues to be consistent. So, consumers wanting great advice, as well as dentists, hygienists and therapists looking to us for the latest innovations, can be reassured that everything is coming from the same factories and that the same rep will walking through the door of their practice and giving out the same information. So yes, it’s been a journey, but mostly a smooth one.
One of the things Haleon was quick to execute was the inaugural Health Inclusivity Index. What work went into that?
As we’re now a company focused on, and dedicated to, everyday health versus being part of a larger pharma company, there’s an expectation that we’ll do more, that we’ll put our weight into research and development, and form partnerships to help make a real difference in everyday health around the world.
Our starting point has been to launch the first ever Health Inclusivity Index, which will consistently measure the ways in which countries around the world find to be inclusive when it comes to health, and asks what is being achieved. We’re extremely proud of this because, for us, inclusivity is the space where, being an everyday health company, we think we’ll be able to have the biggest impact.
It must be said that, although Haleon listed as a separate company in July, the Health Inclusivity Index was in the works beforehand and we worked with partners that were chose because of the trusted science that they base themselves in. So, we worked with UCL and The Economist Impact Unit.
We first of all sponsored a study with UCL lead academic David Napier to set out what already existed in a space of health inclusivity, and we were really surprised to find that there was nothing. We then worked with The Economist Impact Unit to sponsor an in-depth piece looking at whether healthcare systems, and the general environment, were inclusive enough across 40 markets so that it was available to all.
The findings are fascinating. In those 40 markets, there were three areas that we looked at.
The first was whether the system around government policies, through education and other means, was set up to grant the broader population access to healthcare for themselves. As an example, is brushing your children’s teeth, part of the school curriculum?
Second was all about formal healthcare systems, looking at whether pharmacists, dentists, and other primary health care professionals are set up to be really inclusive with their patients.
The third was about whether individuals are given the education and the awareness needed to be empowered to look after their own health.
Although the findings were not too surprising, it was great to gain some validation in that the more inclusive an entire health system was, the longer people lived, and the healthier they were throughout their lives. Essentially, we need to be more inclusive in health overall so that people can be healthier for longer.
The United Kingdom did actually come out on top for health inclusivity.
How is Haleon championing health inclusivity moving forward?
Some of the things that I love doing, and get the most excitement from, are things like the Oral Health in Comprehensive Cleft Care Project, in which we can partner with key academics around the world to support incredible work while also ensuring that the solutions we bring to the market are robust and independently verified. The project is a fantastic one, as provides dentists around the world with the knowledge and skills to care for people who have had cleft surgery as an infant, because that guidance didn’t exist before. We’re very proud of that work.
Haleon has also collaborated with Microsoft in its quest for heath inclusivity. What are the results of that relationship?
Alongside the launch of the Health Inclusivity Index, our work with Microsoft comes at inclusivity from a slightly different angle. It looks at supporting those who are either visually impaired or have difficulty reading in looking after their own health.
The result is that 1,500 of our products are now part of the Microsoft Seeing AI App. Microsoft has developed the app for many purposes but the way in which we’ve collaborated with them is so that where you’re told to, ‘Always read the label,’ if you can’t, or you can’t understand the label, then the app will verbally read the label out to you. Those people can now access the product information, which includes instructions and ingredients, bringing that health information to a wider population. The scheme has gone live in the UK in the US for now – although the ambition is that it will be rolled out worldwide. It’s certainly taken us a lot of time to make sure that all of the language was correct for every single one of those 1,500 products.
The advertising for this, which has gone live in the UK and runs until Christmas, states, ‘Always read the label, even when you can’t.’ This will help us to get the information out there that the labelling instructions are now available for a wider audience. And that also goes for dentists and pharmacists as well, where those labelling instructions are similarly important for so many of our over-the-counter medicines.
The direct consumer marketing will be on TV, radio and via a digital campaign. From a healthcare professional perspective, research has shown us that, for the most part, their lives are made easier when they can point patients towards a trusted source of information, and this means that they will save time where they may have been reading the label to their patients.
Is there anything else in the pipeline at Haleon that you can discuss?
One of the initiatives that we’ve launched within the pharmacy community, that we’ll be bringing to the dental and hygienist community soon, is what we’re calling The Haleon Centre for Human Sciences. This is where we are bringing together the scientific evidence base for our brands with what’s needed to actually get patients, consumers like you and me, to adopt better habits – such as brushing better – or to even change behaviours. We’re really hoping that this will be something really tangible and useful for daily healthcare professionals. A set of tools and interventions to help get the most out of conversations between dentists, hygienists and their patients.
