JNJ BTW

Late Wednesday, United State District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a decision about whether Johnson & Johnson could pursue some of the claims made in its complaint against the American Red Cross to restore the long-held legal boundaries surrounding the use of the Red Cross trademark. Given this matter is still pending, there isn’t much more to say about our legal strategy beyond what has been already said in public statements (here and here) and on this blog (here, here, here and here), but for those who are interested, below is the company’s statement on Wednesday’s decision:

We are pleased that the Court upheld Johnson & Johnson’s use of its Red Cross trademark over the past century as entirely appropriate under federal law, and that the Court upheld our right to pursue the tortious interference and breach of contract claims. We are disappointed that the Court rejected our claims involving ARC’s commercial uses of the emblem. We are reviewing the decision and look forward to continuing this process to resolve our legal dispute with the American Red Cross.

Of course, it is imortant to keep in mind that Johnson & Johnson remains committed to supporting the longstanding mission of the American Red Cross to provide relief services in times of natural disasters.

I usually can’t stomach rubber chicken dinners, but if they were all like the event I went to on last Sunday night, I wouldn’t mind so much.

That night, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (AKA, NJPAC), the freshman class for the New Jersey Hall of Fame was inducted — those honored included Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Malcolm Forbes, Frank Sinatra Toni Morrison, Yogi Berra, Buzz Aldrin, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., Bruce Springsteen and our own Robert Wood Johnson.

Now I’ve lived in NJ for about 13 years (still can’t believe it’s been that long!) and have never considered myself a New Jerseyan. In fact, when we first moved here, my wife came across a New Jersey-based radio station that defines the state by what it is NOT — to this day the announce will scream that this is “Not New York, Not Philadelphia… Proud to be New Jersey” — a phrase that still sets us both off laughing hysterically.

But during his acceptance remarks, Bruce Springsteen not only showed why he is considered a creative genius — he also captured the genius of the Garden State. Bemoaning how NJ is perennially the butt of jokes and “never gets any respect,” Bruce explained:

Perhaps it is this fighting spirit, coupled with the quest to stand up and be recognized by doing something different that has lead so many New Jerseyans to rebel against the status quo and accomplish the remarkable. Certainly that seemed to be one theme that tied most of the award winners together. Indeed, asMargaret points out in her post about the event, many of General Johnson’s ideas:

I like this notion. And perhaps this is one of the reasons why New Jersey remains one of the top medical R&D centers in the world. Certainly marching to a different drum is one key to discovery, but it also requires perseverance and the will to fight on. Or as Edison was famous for saying, “genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

By Patricia Hickey, Johnson & Johnson Corporate Communications

Every day, I try to get out of the office and take a stroll around downtown New Brunswick - for some air, some exercise, to get away from my computer screen and to clear my head. However, on Wednesday April 16th, my daily constitutional took on an entirely new relevance.

That’s because, April 16th was National Start! Walking Day – and a group of approximately 75 Johnson & Johnson employees walked around the campus to kick off the day and show support for The American Heart Association. At the same time, the company’s fitness center sponsored blood pressure and Body Mass Index (BMI) screenings while providing information about how simple things like taking a walk can help you improve your health.

When I learned that cardiovascular disease is our nation’s No. 1 killer and that physical inactivity significantly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, I decided to ramp-up my own activity and I felt walking was an easy step ( no pun intended) to take.

How fitting then that the 16th was also the kick-off for our Million Step Challenge - Team Competition - in which teams of three are tasked with completing 1.25 million steps in 6 weeks. As someone who loves to compete, I figured this was a great way to increase my activity and improve my health. Since signing up, I’ve already walked a total of 311,579 steps — not bad for the first couple of weeks. Now that the summer sun is starting to shine over New Jersey, I’m going to try to top that and hopefully see the benefits of living an even more active lifestyle.

In corporate America, we have heard the term work and family, or work-life, balance drummed into our heads for the last 25 years. This movement has led to the development of more flexible work arrangements, compressed schedules and less restrictive work hours, mostly for the white-collar world.

Experts will tell you that as women and now younger generations have entered the work force, work and family balance has become more of a priority for corporate workers. There is more focus than ever on these workplace issues, and the United States seems to be one of the most challenging environments for this type of balance. Now, it appears that the medical community may be joining this corporate trend and asking increasingly for more work and family balance in their lives.

This made me wonder, has the 24/7, medical “vocation” lost out to more family time and “vacation”? And, is that necessarily a bad thing? Shouldn’t medical personnel have the same privileges that are increasingly expected in other professions?

Jacob Goldstein wrote on this trend in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal and WSJ Healthcare Blog and tried to answer this question. His story and post illustrated how younger doctors’ quest for free time and balance is re-shaping medicine, building more team-based approaches and setting more regular hours. To be sure, there are pros and cons to this development and how it may re-define what constitutes quality care.

Louis Weinstein, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, however, summed it up well:

“I can promise you that I will be available for your delivery, but I have no idea how many hours I will have been up and … how many c-sections I will have done [since awakening] … Or, I can assure you that one of my colleagues will be fresh, will be available and will be focusing just on you. Which would you prefer?”

When my son was born last November, my wife and I had to adjust to this new world. The doctor who had delivered our first two daughters had taken on a new doctor to her practice and scaled back her own weekend hours to get more work and family balance in her life. It made perfect sense to me from a rational point of view, but not from the irrational father side of me who wanted the same trustworthy hands delivering baby No. 3.

Our doctors alternated weekends and off-hours. They both were familiar with my wife and had met with her on office visits. On the office trips I was able to make, as luck would have it, I always saw our old doctor and never met the new doctor until the night my wife went into labor.

I am not always comfortable with change, so my wife warned me to keep an open mind as she lay there in labor. She wasn’t worried at all. And, as you’d expect the new doctor was wonderful. She was attentive, reassuring, skillful and calmly handled the complications that came with our son’s delivery. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better.

Work and family balance … Just another way the world of health care is changing.

In recent years, in addition to learning more about how the company is doing, hearing from the heads of our business segments and attending to other company business, those shareholders attending the Johnson & Johnson Shareholders Meeting can pick up a bag highlighting some of the newest consumer products sold by Johnson & Johnson’s operating companies. Let’s see what this year’s bag contained, shall we?

(Oh, and in case you are wondering, the bag is made of 100% recycled materials…)

Of course, if you’d like to catch what was said at the meeting, which provides a great snapshot of the state of the business and a sense of how the company will grow in the coming years (among other things, expansion in emerging markets, the convergence between our different broadly-based business segments, and the identification of new business models were all mentioned) the entire event is webcast on the Johnson & Johnson website.

By Tish Lascelle, Senior Director, Environment, Health and Safety, Strategy and Assurance, Johnson & Johnson

For those who make environmental protection a living, Earth Day is a no-brainer. We “get it” and on Earth Day, we go beyond our normal efforts to help others “get it” too. I’ve been doing Earth Day events at Johnson & Johnson for seven years but this time, it felt like we have finally reached a tipping point.

This year, my colleagues and I have been trying raise awareness across Johnson & Johnson about sustainable forestry, our Healthy Planet 2010 goals for office paper and paper packaging, and our Forest Products Purchasing Guidelines. As part of this, we thought it would be fun to capture our coworkers on camera telling us about their experiences in forests and why they think they should be protected.

I enlisted Rob, from our corporate TV department, to run the camera. Being a professional at this sort of thing, he asked me several times, “who will be interviewing them?” Huh? Do I really need someone to interview them??!!? My idea was to just give them the microphone and ask them to talk from the heart about forests. I could tell Rob had to humor me on that one, but not for too long. More than 80 people went on tape and wow - were we surprised at the richness of their stories.

We heard two bear stories, a tree-falling-in-the-woods story (between two campsites no less) and a my-kids-remember-our-camping-trip-more-than-our-Disney-trip story. Being a health care company, it wasn’t surprising that lots of people recognize how many pharmaceuticals are derived from forests and how that’s important for Johnson & Johnson. (Interesting that the WSJ Health Blog had something on the importance of biodiversity to human health earlier today…). We also heard a lot about the role forests have in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Earth Day has come a long way. We still give away small spruce tree seedlings, but this year our employees also proudly walked away with recycled-content toilet paper. Oh, yes, they laughed and joked about ‘previously used toilet paper,’ but we didn’t have one roll left at the end of the day.

I’m proud that so many people are ‘getting it’…. They are taking what they know home and they are applying it at work. So after today, perhaps I need to revise my approach - maybe I no longer need to chase people to help them get “it” - but just let them come to me and my environmental colleagues with their innovative ideas…

Unbelievable Spring day here in New Jersey. The sun is beating down out of the clear blue sky, trees are budding and the air is filled with the sweet smell of the moist earth. All is good with the world.

It was, in fact, a perfect setting for an Earth Day fair on the New Brunswick Campus. Every year, a team from our environment, health and safety group holds a fair to help remind people of what the company is doing — and what can be done at home — to conserve energy and take more responsibility for the world around us. It’s all in keeping with the company’s commitment to protecting the environment and natural resources, but — as an avid gardener — I always like the yearly event because it brings a bit of Spring and the outdoors into our hermetically sealed offices.

This year, they hauled in a phalanx of flowering trees from a local nursery to make our cafeteria look like a miniature version of the Philly Flower Show. Among the tables of information (for instance, did you know that an average tree sheds about 3,600 pounds of leaves which return about 70% of their nutrients to the soil?) and helpful hints, they raffled off a weeping cherry tree and a set of solar-powered outdoor lights.

I, of course, didn’t win a thing! Still, as I close up shop tonight, I’m now anxious to get home to start digging around in my garden — and get up to my elbows in the good earth.

Today, The New York Times editorial page commented on the concept of preemption, basing much of their position on an April 6 New York Times article on the same subject and once again featuring ORTHO EVRA®, the birth control patch marketed in the U.S. by our Ortho-McNeil unit. Today, Ortho-McNeil published a letter from David Norton, the Company Group Chairman, Worldwide Commercial and Operations, who is responsible for the Ortho-McNeil business that provides more context from our perspective for those who are interested.

By Ray

What could Ben Franklin, Dave Brubeck and me (representing Johnson & Johnson) possibly have in common with the US Department of State? Well, earlier this week I was privileged to receive on behalf of Johnson & Johnson the State Department’s first-ever corporate recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy.

And America’s jazz great? He was another awardee. David Brubeck, Johnson & Johnson and two other organizations — Search for Common Ground and The University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy — were recognized for having established positive and productive international outreach in their continuing efforts

Johnson & Johnson received the award based on its 20 years of support for Safe Kids, a program we helped design in 1988 to reduce accidental injury and death in children aged 14 and under. But the real congratulations go to Dr. Martin Eichelberger, who had the vision and requested our help to create the program.

At the time, Dr Eichelberger was head of trauma services at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington — and was alarmed by the growing numbers of children needing Emergency Room treatment for major — but often preventable — injuries.

Today, this initiative is credited with reducing the incidence of accidental injury and death among children by about 38,000 children a year in the U.S.. And it’s going global. To date, the program has made its way into 17 countries around the world.

My favorite moment? Sitting with the Brubecks at lunch and having the chance to tell them that my wife was rehearsing David Brubeck’s piece “To Hope” with her choir that very week.

My biggest insight?: Diplomacy comes in many, many forms.

One more thing from Camp Baby — after hearing about the Safe Kids campaign, some of the campers asked for some more info on the program. Happy to oblige.

Every year, accidental injury kills about 1 million kids around the world, and it’s maddening that so many of these deaths can be prevented by following simple safety tips and approaches. To accomplish this, Safe Kids turns to unbranded public service advertising, the promotion of safety-enhancing products like bike helmets, and the enactment and enforcement of safety laws. Last year, Safe Kids turned to water safety and here is a video about the program:

It’s been quite a success - since Safe Kids was founded at Children’s National Medical Center in 1987, the accidental death rate for children in the US has fallen by 45% in the US - and the program was recognized yesterday by the State Dept in Wash, DC, during ceremonies marking the first annual The Benjamin Franklin Awards for Public Diplomacy, hosted by Hon Condoleezza Rice.