Editor’s Note: The following is from Robert Bazemore, Jr., President of our Centocor Ortho Biotech, Inc. company.

Recently, I had the honor of meeting Gordon Kenyon, an incredibly brave, young individual with late-stage, metastatic prostate cancer, who was accompanied by his wife, Kim. They recounted how tests for an unexpected back injury ultimately revealed that he had prostate cancer-induced bone fractures. The unanticipated and devastating news about advanced prostate cancer turned his life upside down, as he and his family were immediately faced with a host of decisions.

Since his diagnosis, this former Marine, tri-athlete and father of three young children has undergone several treatments in an attempt to win the upper hand over the disease. His wife gives the term “pillar of strength” new meaning, seeking out the latest information and resources while he focuses on maintaining his health and providing for the long-term needs of his family. His captivating story impressed upon me the need for new treatment options as well as the critical role of education and support services to manage the baggage that accompanies this disease.

Prostate cancer is often misunderstood. About 32,000 men are estimated to die this year from the disease in the U.S. alone – enough men to fill approximately 400 metropolitan buses, including standing passengers – or 77 Boeing 747-400 airplanes. It’s also the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men in the United States. Yet, despite these staggering numbers, there’s often the misperception that prostate cancer is less dangerous than other cancers.

Legendary golf champion and prostate cancer survivor Arnold Palmer joins Centocor Ortho Biotech and Us TOO to launch My Prostate Cancer Roadmap, a special resource for advanced prostate cancer patients and their loved ones. My Prostate Cancer Roadmap helps these patients and those who care about them navigate, via a GPS format, a plethora of issues related to the disease, including health and wellness, work and relationships – as well as more difficult topics, such as sex and intimacy. This resource offers two paths – one for men with advanced prostate cancer and the other for family, friends and caregivers – to help address their related, but unique, needs.

In honor of National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, I invite you to join our journey to raise awareness of advanced prostate cancer by visiting My Prostate Cancer Roadmap and sharing it with the men in your life.

I learned about a new study that finds the U.S. is facing serious challenges to maintaining its position as the global leader in medical innovation. The study Gone Tomorrow? A Call to Promote Medical Innovation, Create Jobs, and Find Cures in America was commissioned by the Council for American Medical Innovation (CAMI), which views leadership in medical innovation as a key part of addressing the health and economic crisis in the U.S.

What does this mean for a company like Johnson & Johnson? Joaquin Duato, Company Group Chairman, Pharmaceuticals—The Americas, spoke at a We Work for Health event at Rutgers University about the importance of medical innovation and how our pharmaceutical business is working to further innovation. He emphasized the significance of collaboration between public and private sectors at all levels of development to address unmet medical needs around the world. Joaquin also highlighted an important external factor that impacts medical innovation—policies that support leadership and investment in the life sciences, which in turn spur innovation, create jobs and improve the lives of patients. You can read his full remarks here.

From Paul Stoffels, Global Head, Pharmaceuticals Research & Development

Last week I was privileged to represent Johnson & Johnson at the Pacific Health Summit (PHS) – an annual gathering that convenes nearly 250 leaders in science, policy and industry to focus on issues of critical importance to global health. It is a unique event that connects decision makers to spark solutions in the quest for a healthier world.

This year’s theme was Maternal and Newborn Health. The idea is that caring for mothers and providing opportunities for better prenatal, newborn and childhood care can lead to a healthier, more productive world.

For many of us in the developed world, access to maternal and child care is a given. But for many mothers and children around the world, that’s not the case. According to a recent report, globally, 8.8 million children a year die before their fifth birthday, more than 40 percent of them during their first four weeks of life. At least two-thirds of all child deaths are preventable.

No theme could be more aligned with the work and values of Johnson & Johnson. Women and children have been at the heart of our core business for nearly 125 years. They are an important focus of our public/private partnering, and remain a touchstone of our charitable giving. At the same time, no one institution or organization can solve this problem alone, which is why I believe that collaboration and sharing solutions and resources is so important.

One of the most critical discussions I participated in was the session focused on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.  According to the UNAIDS AIDS Epidemic Update 2009, in 2008, approximately 430,000 children under age 15 became infected with HIV, mainly through mother-to-child transmission; about 90 percent of these occurred in Africa.  At the same time, in high income counties this problem has been virtually eliminated through effective voluntary testing and counseling, access to antiretroviral therapy, safe delivery practices, and availability of breast-milk substitutes.  

The conversation on this topic at PHS was spirited to say the least – it was clear to me that the participants strongly believe that if similar interventions were implemented around the world, they could have significant impact in saving children’s lives. Our challenge now, discussed by Sheri McCoy, worldwide chairman of our Pharmaceuticals Group in an essay in the “Summit Challenge” compendium, is to determine the most effective channels and identify the appropriate resources to take action and make this a reality. At Johnson & Johnson, we have begun doing so by working with global stakeholders and supporting partners, such as mothers2mothers and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, on PMTCT programs.

I also detailed progress in our partnership with the TB Alliance, aimed at developing new drugs for a disease that still causes 2 million deaths each year, a significant portion of them being children. Our partnership has enabled great clinical progress, and led to the recent announcement of the Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens initiative. CPTR members include the world’s leading pharmaceutical developers, global regulatory agencies, and civil society organizations, which are working together to overcome obstacles and speed new TB drug regimens to the patients who most urgently need them. Incidentally, this unprecedented cross-sector partnership to tackle TB was fueled by conversations at the 2009 PHS.

Other Johnson & Johnson colleagues at the Summit shared experiences from additional initiatives in which our organization plays a role, including the International Partnership on Microbicides, which aims to end transmission of HIV; Children Without Worms, which works to end the infestation of parasitic worms in children, and text4baby, an innovative free mobile information service that provides pregnant women and new moms with information they need to take care of their own and their children’s health.

The Summit helped us see that while we are making significant inroads into global health through innovation, novel partnerships and access to medicines, there is still much to be done. I sincerely hope that the seeds planted last week in London will bear fruit in the form of new partnerships between industry, government, NGOs, and public and private entities. We know that continuing the dialogue we started at the Pacific Health Summit, as well as our ability to deliver new and innovative health solutions, globally and locally – will make a world of difference in the lives and health of millions.

From William C. Weldon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Johnson & Johnson

Although I’ve been a reader of JNJBTW since it was launched, I’ve yet to be a contributor. Today, though, I gave a talk on prevention and why we should pay as much attention to keeping people healthy as we do to treating them when they’re sick – and I thought it was something readers of this blog may find of interest. 

Now I know it may sound simplistic or obvious to say preventing disease is better than treating or curing it, and it may be surprising to hear someone like me – who heads the world’s largest health care products company – advocating this idea.  

But if you’ve spent a lifetime in health care, as I have, you just can’t ignore the nagging sense that there must be a better way to improve the health and well-being of people and make our health care system financially viable than just doing more of what we do now.

While new drugs and technologies help us treat – and cure – many diseases today, it’s also true that we’re treating a lot of preventable disease. The World Health Organization says 80 percent of heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, and 40 percent of cancer could be prevented if people would just do three things: eat healthy, be physically active and not smoke.

Sounds easy, but if it were, we’d all be doing it.

Hard as it may be, how can we not try to move people toward healthy lifestyles? Chronic disease accounts for 75 percent of U.S healthcare spending and about $1 trillion a year in lost productivity, (http://www.chronicdiseaseimpact.com/) not to mention the suffering that goes with diabetes, stroke, heart disease, or cancer.

So, I discussed that at the World Health Care Congress today and explained how we’ve been able to cut health risks – and costs – among our employees through prevention and wellness at work. Call it our form of “Do It Yourself” Health Care Reform, and we hope other employers will join in.

So what have we done at J&J?

Back in 1978, one of my predecessors as CEO at J&J – Jim Burke –was facing a doubling of health care costs. He decided to address these rising expenditures by creating a healthy workforce. At J&J, prevention involves helping healthy employees stay well, identifying and managing health risks, diagnosing and treating chronic disease early and managing high cost chronic disease.

Today J&J employees get a $500 discount off their health insurance premiums if they work to reduce their health risks – things like smoking, overeating, high cholesterol, physical inactivity, hypertension and stress. 

We try to make this easier to do, with on-site clinics, screenings, counseling, gym facilities, and cafeterias that served healthy food. We also have interactive and personalized digital health coaching that’s available 24/7. The coaching is tailored to each person’s motivations, confidence level, medical needs, personal characteristics and lifestyle. 

So what’s the result? Only 4 percent of J&J employees smoke compared with more than 18 percent of Americans. Less than 7 percent of our people have high blood pressure, yet 28 percent of the U.S. public does. Seven percent of J&J employees have high cholesterol, while five times as many Americans – 37 percent – do. And while we’re not satisfied that 20 percent of our employees are obese, that’s far better than the 34 percent obesity rate for America overall.

With those kinds of changes, we estimate we’ve avoided some $21 million in costs from 2001 to 2009 alone. Our health care costs are trending 4 percent below increases for industries such as ours. And our return on investment has been 4 to 1, about $4 in healthcare and productivity savings for every dollar we’ve spent on prevention.

If companies – big and small – placed more focus on prevention, and government incented such services, retirees might enter their Medicare years with fewer costly chronic diseases. Since Medicare is more than 20 percent of the Federal budget, maybe we could see smaller deficits down the road, not to mention, an America that’s more competitive in the global marketplace.

Prevention adds up to more than dollars and cents. Employees tell us all the time what a huge difference our programs have made for them – how they’ve beaten back obesity, gained control over high blood pressure, started breathing better, and taken up exercise. 

There’s no value you can put on this.

And that’s what I said today at World Health Care Congress. People invest emotionally in their jobs if we invest in them. And for the time we all spend at work, an investment in health is not such a big investment after all.

As if working moms don’t have enough to manage, a recent survey found that 86% of women over the age of 35 are concerned that their vision is getting worse as they age, and 74% say they have problems with near vision. According to the women surveyed, these vision challenges can have physical as well as psychological effects on their daily lives.

An estimated 90 million people in the US have presbyopia, which is a common vision condition that makes it difficult to focus on close objects. Presbyopia is disruptive because it can affect a person’s ability to read clearly, work on a computer, or use a cell phone or PDA.

To gain some insight into all of this, I asked Dr. Colleen Riley, Vice President of Professional Development for Vistakon, to share her perspective as an optometrist and a working mother who is also affected by presbyopia. Here’s what she had to say about her experiences and what you can do if you think you might be developing presbyopia:

What are some of the signs of presbyopia?

As many moms know, when your children want to show you something, like a picture they painted at school, they hold it about two inches from your face. If you have presbyopia, you might not be able to see the picture clearly and would have to back up or hold it out further away from you. Or, for example, you are out to dinner on a Friday night at a restaurant and the light is dim. You can’t see the menu and might need to adjust the light in order to read. As the condition progresses, you can’t work through it anymore and have to wear glasses or contact lenses in order to focus properly.

What is the most difficult part of living with presbyopia?

For me, the most difficult part was dealing with the headaches and fatigue caused by not being able to see clearly. I was frustrated, because like many working moms I was used to doing anything and everything from early in the morning until I went to bed at night. At home, I had a difficult time focusing my eyes at the dinner table while interacting within a close proximity to my family. Being an optometrist, I knew the diagnosis was presbyopia and that it was time for vision correction.

What advice would you give working moms who think they might have presbyopia?

My advice for working moms dealing with similar symptoms or others who think they might have presbyopia is to see an eye care professional early on. Many people tend to use readers, like the type that you can buy at the drugstore. Don’t do that. Instead, make an appointment for a comprehensive eye exam. The optometrist will look for other health issues, such as diabetes, in addition to helping you choose the best option for vision correction. Many people don’t realize that multifocal contact lenses are available and can be a good option for active people, like working moms, because you don’t have to worry about glasses sliding off of your face or getting lost.

Many working moms take care of themselves last and wait until something is completely broken before seeking help. Make it easier on yourself. As one of my colleagues expressed in a recent post about eye health, you should treat eye exams like you do dental exams or physicals and have your eyes checked every year.

From Devon Prutzman, Director, WW Communications, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics

 

Business ethics isn’t a new topic, but it does seem to take on particular relevance in light of today’s complex business environment. The tough challenges facing leaders in all sectors of society certainly aren’t going to be solved overnight and one Johnson & Johnson leader recently recognized the importance of helping current and future business leaders better understand the role of ethics in shaping the way they — and their organizations — do business.

 

I had the chance to watch Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics Company Group Chairman Nick Valeriani speak to members of the Rutgers University Institute for Ethical Leadership a few weeks ago on the topic of Creating an Ethical Organization and Dealing with Ethical Issues. Nick delivered the keynote address to more than 50 business students and business leaders for the first installment in the Ethical Leadership Speaker Series at Rutgers’ Business School campus in Newark, New Jersey. While he’s known for being an engaging speaker on any topic, it was clear that talking about ethics brought out Nick’s sense of passion about setting high standards for business leaders and for always doing the right thing. 

 

He began by discussing Our Credo and offering examples of how its values drive Johnson & Johnson’s business by encouraging “candid, transparent discussions to reach what we believe are the right decisions for our patients, our employees, our communities, and our shareholders.”  He talked about why building an ethical culture in an organization is important and shared some of the ethical challenges he has faced in his career, conceding that “it never gets easier to make these kinds of decisions as a leader. There are multiple sides to almost every decision and it takes a strong moral compass to stand by your values and make the tough calls.” 

 

He shared an example of making a tough call by reflecting on his decision to halt the U.S. launch and discontinue the international sale of a product gained through an acquisition. Nick acknowledged the disappointment of failing to deliver on a business objective, but said, “Once we understood what the data showed — that the product would not provide an additional benefit to patients, and in fact, could present additional risk – we knew we had a difficult choice to make. We held an honest and frank discussion about the options, but ultimately, the decision was clear: patients come first.” 

 

He went on to explore the concept of “ethical leadership” by pointing out that it’s important to value both sides of the equation.  A code of ethics that is created without leaders who commit to “ingraining honesty and integrity into the corporate culture is an empty ideal,” he said. “And leadership that doesn’t ground itself in a commitment to doing the right thing is destined to fail.” 

 

The audience responded to Nick’s candor and honesty with a barrage of questions, engaging in a thoughtful dialogue about how to instill ethical values in their own organizations and how to face difficult issues in companies that don’t have clear standards for ethical behavior. It was evident that his advice resonated with the audience and that they valued the opportunity to learn from someone who has spent more than three decades learning to lead in a values-driven culture.

 

He closed the talk by offering a simple piece of advice to the present and future leaders in the audience on creating an enduring ethical culture: “be authentic.” He stressed that the single most important thing a leader can do is lead by example, holding him or herself to a high standard and being transparent about personal values. “Have the courage not to compromise,” he said. “Your behavior speaks louder than your words.”

 

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, though healthcare companies (like Johnson & Johnson) would like to take a more active role in the ongoing conversations online, most are still sitting on the sidelines. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that there is quite a bit of uncertainty about just what is appropriate under the current regulatory framework.

It’s all rather complicated, but in the US a lot of the uncertainty around how to engage online concerns how companies that sell highly regulated prescription medications and medical devices can do so and still meet their regulatory requirements to 1) report any side effects that people may experience while taking their products and 2) to ensure they don’t promote their products beyond what is covered in their approved product label. It may sound relatively straightforward, but the reality is that these requirements cause pause since there is no clear guidance from the regulator about what behaviors or approaches are frowned upon and which are acceptable.

This uncertainty has not gone unnoticed, and for the past two days the FDA has held a hearing on the subject. I’ve been sitting in a crowded (and increasingly hot) conference room WITHOUT WiFi watching a steady stream of presentations. It’s been an interesting series of presentations so far – and it will take a while to digest all that has been discussed.

For those unable to be at the hearing or watch the webcast, some of the presentations and testimonies made can be found over at Health Central. You can also follow the flow of information from the two-day meeting on Twitter at #FDASM. I’ve also been noticing some interesting posts on the events over the past two days from Mark Senak over at Eye on FDA.

Between suggestions for different regulatory approaches, thoughts around how technology can be used to spread information and discussions about who is responsible for what, one theme kept recurring –that through responsible engagement, companies can help address and even correct misinformation about their products online. This ultimately could help patients and physicians make informed health decisions.

Hearing this theme come up again and again made me smile. You see, when the hearing was announced, it set off a flurry of meetings and discussions with people from throughout Johnson & Johnson – from legal, regulatory, public affairs and marketing — to determine whether we would participate in the meetings and, if so, what we would say.

Though there was a lot of back and forth, one thing was clear to us – that the Internet and social media play an enormously important role in public health and health literacy and that through responsible behaviors and actions companies can – and should – help address confusing or inaccurate information online. We wanted to advocate for flexibility in the regulatory approach to online content so that companies can participate more fully, and in so doing add their voices to the online conversation with the benefit of helping to advance health literacy by providing accurate and credible product information in real time. By speaking at the hearing, we felt we could share some of our ideas about how companies like Johnson & Johnson could engage responsibly in this space.

And so yesterday, Liz Forminard from Johnson & Johnson’s legal department and Philomena McArthur from regulatory affairs for our pharmaceuticals group, stood before the FDA’s panel and provided some thoughts on behalf of the company.

What did they say?

Well, the transcript will be captured in the docket, but I thought I’d highlight a few things they touched on:

• Companies should not be held responsible for policing the whole of the Internet.
• There should be some flexibility in regulatory approaches online, and for more opportunities to take advantage of technological resources to get people accurate, credible and current information where and when they need it.
• Having clarity in regulatory approach to social media is critical to enable participation from healthcare companies that provide a valuable source of product information

There was, of course, much more said – but I think the key to all of this will be an ongoing dialog between companies, patients and the regulator to develop workable – and flexible — approaches that will enable companies to be part of this conversation.

You have to watch out for my colleague Rob Halper when he has a camera in his hand. During last week’s BlogWorld conference in Las Vegas, Rob was roaming the halls, looking for a chance to capture the event on film. Luckily he had a chance to interview Kim McAllister from Emergiblog who, along with Dr. Val Jones, organized the day. Check it out:

Last week, I was in Las Vegas to attend BlogWorld where Johnson & Johnson was one of two corporate sponsors of the event’s first-ever track on MedBlogging. Kim McAllister, one of the organizers of the Medblogging track, has a great synopsis over at Emergiblog, and together with Dr. Val Jones , pulled together a thoughtful series of panels throughout the day that drew some of the high rollers in medical and healthcare blogging from throughout North America — and even one, Bongi, who came all the way from South Africa!

As is often the case with these kinds of gatherings, it was great to finally put faces to names – and to see that the online personalities that they project through their blogs was a pretty dang close match to who they are in real life.

I had a chance to say a few things as part of a panel, alongside Paul Levy of Running a Hospital fame, who joined us virtually and Bob Stern from our co-sponsor, the medical news site MedPage Today, during our panel on “The Value of Blogs To Hospitals, Industry, and News Organizations.” Thanks to masterful moderating by Professor Gary Schwitzer whose Health News Review does its best to encourage responsible healthcare reporting, we covered a fair amount of ground — moving from how we each got involved, to covering some of the complexities associated with rolling the dice to make our blogs and sites a reality.

Though much was discussed throughout the day, one theme just kept coming up again and again — and that was what could all of us do to help ensure the accuracy of healthcare information that is available online. According to a recent report by Pew Internet & American Life, 61% of Americans go online for health information and of those, a majority access user-generated-health information when making decisions about their healthcare needs. But, unfortunately, much of what is spread online is misleading or in some cases completely unsupported by scientific or medical knowledge, a fact that Dr. Val Jones made clear during the panel she hosted.

As I sped back East after the conference, a couple of thoughts kept rattling around in my brain concerning what we all can do to try to encourage the spread of useful, scientific information:

1) While the online world is often a great source for medical information, there is a lot of misleading information out there.
2) There is more that medical professionals and others who have some scientific knowledge and information can do to provide clarity around confusing and often conflicting information about different medical conditions.
3) Companies that likewise have data and information should also be part of these discussions in some way.

Now, given it was just a one-day meeting, no real solutions were agreed upon. But based on the conversations that I had with some of the folks there, there seemed to be a consensus that we should all meet again, perhaps at a similar event, to discuss more that we can all do together. Suggestions for locations and approaches are welcome!

I’m sure there are other accounts of the MedBlogger track that I’ve failed to include, but below are a few that provide a nice synopsis:

KevinMD: Scenes from BlogWorld Expo 2009 and the Future of Medical Social Media
Dr. Anonymous: BlogWorld 09 HIPAA and Blogging

Oh and special thanks for making this event great also goes to Dr. Ramona Bates who create a quilt that everyone in attendance signed!

UPDATE:

Here’s another post on the MedBlogging track — this time from Dr. V — Medical Blogosphere Rising.

Last week, I attended a conference that Fordham University and KPMG sponsored to discuss integrity in the global financial markets and the role that enhanced regulation might play in the economic recovery.  More than 150 participants met at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in the heart of New York City, arguably the capital of “global finance,” and engaged in what turned into a very rich, timely and broad discussion of business ethics.

While Johnson & Johnson is a company known more for our baby powder and shampoo than for a role in shaping financial markets, we are well-recognized for having built an enduring values-based culture over our more than 120-year history.  It was this topic that Dominic Caruso, our chief financial officer, addressed with the audience of business leaders, students and academics.

After telling the history of Our Credo, which Robert Wood Johnson wrote in the early 1940s, Caruso explained the importance of having a “purpose beyond profits” as a company’s foundation.  Caruso said:

“Over the course of our history, we have not been perfect, but we have been fortunate to have built a values-based culture where our employees know they are expected to do the right thing and to put the needs of our patients and customers first … In an industry like health care, where people often place their lives and well-being – or trust the care of their loved ones – to our products, there can be no question, no doubt, about this primary responsibility.”

Though Caruso stressed that Our Credo was a powerful “connective tissue” for our employees around the globe, he explained that it could not stand alone.  Tying into the regulation theme of the conference, he said we must also take a “trust, but verify” approach when it comes to how employees uphold our values-based culture as well as other business compliance issues – and that there needs to vigilance.  As he explained:

“We are not perfect and Our Credo – while a powerful tool – is not sufficient to ensure a corporate-wide culture of integrity.  We, too, must take additional measures to introduce and reinforce this culture with our employees … to hold ourselves accountable for our actions and decisions … and to adhere to regulations and policies that support this values-based culture.”

In concluding, Caruso challenged the audience to identify their higher purpose: “Ask yourself, what it is that your business – or you as an individual – are trying to achieve?  And how committed are you to staying true to that goal in both good and bad times? … In the end, the success of our businesses and financial markets must be anchored to a foundation of integrity, values and a purpose beyond profits.”