Author: Admin

Precision Value & Health Acquires Makara Health, Expanding the Company’s Footprint and Communications Capabilities in Europe

PRESS RELEASE |

Bethesda, Md., April 12, 2023 — Precision Value & Health, the industry leader in delivering complementary, integrated and specialized capabilities across the commercialization continuum, today announced that it has acquired Makara Health, a UK-based international healthcare communications agency. The move will expand Precision’s European footprint and reinforce the company’s market growth position with its core capabilities in Europe. Founded in 2013, Makara has capabilities in learning and development, medical and patient education, PR and brand promotion, offering its diverse roster of healthcare client companies high-quality, strategic, scientifically robust programs, as well as creative delivery solutions.

With this acquisition, Makara becomes part of the Precision Value & Health team. The Makara team will work closely with PRECISIONscientia, an agency dedicated to delivering medical and scientific communications that expertly interpret and translate the science of medicine.

Broadening the reach of our services in Europe is one of Precision Value & Health’s focused strategies in order to extend our offering to more organizations and healthcare clinicians around the world,”

“Ensuring scientific rigor and accuracy for those responsible for the care of patients is a business imperative for Precision and Makara’s proven track record beautifully complements our offerings.

Doug Fulling, president of Precision Value & Health.

The acquisition of Makara further enhances Precision Value & Health’s ability to offer pharmaceutical clients in Europe culturally aligned programs, along with tailored senior support to achieve their business objectives.

In considering this move, it was very important for us to align with the right company – one that shared our values and would ensure that Makara would continue to offer clients fresh and robust thinking from an experienced and talented team,”

“We are excited to say that we have found this with Precision Value & Health, a company that shares our approach and our belief in the scientific story as the foundation of every pharmaceutical brand.

Louise Sharp, founder and chief executive officer of Makara Health.

Given Precision’s breadth of commercialization experience, from market intelligence platforms to value and access solutions, the integration of Makara into Precision Value & Health will provide European customers a broader array of services from Precision, bringing more comprehensive and compelling support for clients worldwide.

About Precision Value & Health

Precision Value & Health is engineered to bring specialized expertise to every juncture of the innovation and commercialization continuum. With teams harnessing data-driven evidence and leveraging real-world experience, Precision Value & Health partners with life science companies to establish and communicate the clinical, economic, and humanistic value of innovative therapies. Our commercialization capabilities include global pricing and market access strategy, investor relations and ESG solutions, healthcare communications and marketing, evidence generation and strategy, medical and scientific communications, managed-markets marketing, and data-driven analytics and insights. Precision Value & Health is shifting the trajectory and accelerating your success. Visit www.precisionvaluehealth.com.

About PRECISIONscientia: “Your Science Is Our Responsibility”

Founded in 2002, PRECISIONscientia is an authority in interpreting and communicating the science of today’s cutting-edge therapies. With more than 230 employees who have experience in virtually every therapeutic area, PRECISIONscientia provides scientific and medical marketing, medical affairs, and training solutions to pharmaceutical and biotech clients. PRECISIONscientia was founded with the simple belief that the scientific story is the foundation of every pharmaceutical brand. As a result, it seeks out business professionals who deeply understand science and are committed to perfection, superior results, and relationships that transcend brands and companies. To learn more, visit www.precisionscientia.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn. Learn more about current openings by visiting our careers page.

About Makara Health 

At Makara Health, everything we do is informed by integrity, intelligence, and kindness. Set up with an agile model from the start, Makara brings together the brightest minds in the industry to work in partnership with our clients to ask the right questions, explore the possibilities, and inspire change.

Our highly experienced team come from a range of diverse backgrounds enabling us to offer clients tailored programmes that encompass elements from our five main offerings: Medical Education, Learning and Development, Brand and Promotion, PR and Communications, and Patient Education. From the smallest project to the largest programme, we care about delivering the highest quality strategy, outputs, and outcomes, supporting our clients as part of their wider team. At Makara, as soon as we’re in, we’re all in.

US Media Contact:
Kelly Wilder
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
kelly.wilder@precisionmedicinegrp.com 

UK Media Contact:
Beth Gaffey
Media Contact
+44 (0) 7884 318 976
Bethan.Gaffey@PrecisionVH.com

Learning from  “Lessons in Chemistry”

by Helen Rae |

February 11th marks the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, providing a moment to reflect on the significant gender gap that still persists in the majority of STEM disciplines. Taking a step back and looking to the past, it’s good to acknowledge we have come a long way. I’m still seething after finishing the glorious “Lessons in Chemistry”, a must-read book by Bonnie Garmus. The injustice suffered by the main character, Elizabeth Zott, as she battles to have her clinical research recognised in the male dominated scientific community of the 1950s, is excruciating.

Sadly whilst Zott’s predicament is purely fictional, this story has played out countless times in the real world. Take Rosalind Franklin for example, her work using X-ray crystallography was instrumental in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Unbeknownst to her, her work was shown to other scientists namely James Watson and Francis Crick, who later won a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. That’s only one story we know of; how many more had their research stolen and credited to male colleagues, or simply gave up the fight and are consigned to obscurity?

I do feel lucky, that after studying Biomedical Sciences at university I stepped into medcomms and thrived in an area which provided the opportunity to continue to flex my scientific knowledge in my day to day work. Currently working at Makara I’m fortunate enough to work for a female boss, shattering any perception of a glass ceiling. Our 20-strong scientific team is 80% women and non-binary people is another reason to be hopeful.

But what of the clinical researchers who have followed Rosalind Franklin? Yes, there has been progress but a lack of women in science still exists today. This starts at a grass roots level with females only making 35% of students studying core STEM subjects.1

For university graduates, it’s even lower with females making up only 26% for core STEM subjects, but this figure has been steadily increasing over recent years. As you get to the workplace the number drops again with females making up 24% of employees in 2019, but this is up from 21% in 2016.1

Why does this all this matter? Well recent a recent Elsiver Connect article revealed that that gender diversity is crucial to science, in three ways.2

  1. It’s been shown scientific research is more accurate when gender is considered. Most scientific research does not adequately consider sex or gender as variables resulting in male results being treated as the norm. It’s clear that whether you’re studying seat belt design or heart medication for products to be safe and effective they should be tested on both genders
  2. Women bring unique perspectives to research and scientific conversation, diversity adds to the collective intelligence of a research group, enhancing creativity and providing new contexts to understand societal aspects of the research
  3. There is a need for more STEM professionals, and women have a clear role to play as Prof. James Stirling, Provost of Imperial College London, in Elsevier’s gender report stated: “With this level of gender imbalance, we are not properly exploiting the UK scientific talent base. If we want more high-quality scientists, I am absolutely convinced that we will find them amongst the female population, and that is why encouraging more young women into STEM and supporting them properly is so vitally important.”

It’s encouraging to see that the need for diversity is being openly recognised. For me being in a scientific role within med comms in a women-led team is bucking the trend, it would be great to see this reflected across the scientific field as a whole. What I hope is that when my daughter reaches the stage when she is deciding on a career path, that no barrier exists and the imbalance is consigned to history.

References

  1. https://www.stemwomen.com/women-in-stem-percentages-of-women-in-stem-statistics#:~:text=According%20the%20recent%20UCAS%20data,in%20the%20UK%20are%20women
  2. https://www.elsevier.com/connect/3-reasons-gender-diversity-is-crucial-to-science

They/Them… Working Outside of the Binary

by Makara |

Here at Makara Health, our lovely HR department is well into the process of updating our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy, and – as someone who adds a little diversity to the workplace because of my gender identity – it got me thinking about equality and inclusion. You see, one of the things I’ve always valued in a workplace is the ability to bring myself to work, exactly as I am. At 40 years of age, I’ve done a lot of pretending to be “normal”, and here at Makara, I’ve felt like my true self has been not only accepted but viewed positively by my co-workers. I feel equal, and I feel included. I don’t need to pretend to be normal, because I and my differences are seen and treated as normal.

Let’s start at the beginning. My gender identity first presented as a bit of an in-joke in my family. These were very much the early days of the modern open discussion of transgender identity, and – don’t worry – I was in on the joke (I came up with half of them!). People would ask, “have you ever noticed that your kids are the wrong way round?” when referring to the very boyish ways I sometimes behaved and the openness of my brother when expressing emotion. Or, for those who only noticed my behaviour, “It’s like you’ve got two sons, not one”. My mum tried her best to wedge me into dresses but for most of my childhood was faced with a taffeta-clad tantrum when she tried. But as much as I was masculine, I was also feminine. I loved my long hair being put into ringlets. “She’s just a tomboy, she’ll soon get interested in makeup and heels when she discovers boys”. But the make-up and heels never did come along. There were points growing up when I wondered if there’d been some colossal mistake and if I was actually a boy, but that identity didn’t really fit. I knew I wasn’t a “proper” girl, but I wasn’t a boy either.

I kind of envy kids growing up today (and kind of don’t, at least none of the dumb stuff I did as a kid was captured on camera and posted on TikTok!) but kids today have so many words to describe who they are and places to go to find out more. I just thought I was defective.

Then one day I heard a description. Imagine the music you might hear in a movie when the clouds part to reveal a ray of light that shines on exactly what the hero is looking for. Are you imagining it? Good. It’s important for atmospheric purposes.

Non-binary.*

Not only am I not defective. There are enough other people like me out there that there’s a name for it.

I’m keenly aware of the importance of words in my role as a writer, and there’s something particularly jarring about not having the words to describe yourself. You feel unrepresented, uncared for, misunderstood, not real… other. Everything becomes more clunky and complicated… “well it’s kind of like I’m a bit this but not completely and also a bit that” and in the end, you just settle with “I’m that”. Which is what I did. I decided it was easier to identify as a woman because my biological sex is female. But I always felt like I was lying, or that I was some weird subsection of woman that wasn’t quite the same as the rest. Now I had a description. I am non-̩binary.

However, despite having words to define ourselves, and seeing some increase in the open-mindedness of society as a whole, it can still be pretty bleak out there.

In a recent survey of those who identify as LGBT+ in the UK, 6.9% of respondents identified as non-binary. While the average UK life satisfaction is 7.7/10, it’s only 5.5 for non-binary individuals, and over three-quarters of non-binary individuals avoid expressing their gender identity for fear of a negative response from others. There is also no legal recognition of non-binary individuals in the UK.

We’ve come a long way, but there’s still so far to go. While we’re waiting for more acceptance and formalised recognition, our safe spaces are literal lifesavers. If you know someone non-binary or trans, talk to them about their experiences and ask them what you could do to make their lives better – although be sure to check they are comfortable talking about it and respect them if they are not. Show yourself to be a safe space. We need safe spaces.

I am incredibly grateful that my workplace is a safe space for me to be myself. When you feel comfortable enough to stop pretending, you can drop that heavy, exhausting mask and use your energy to be creative and to get on with life… just like everyone else.

Footnotes

*At this point I’d like to add that the trans experience is incredibly varied, not only in terms of identity but in terms of how people proceed socially and medically. I can only give an account of my personal experience of being non-binary. Should you wish to learn more about the trans experience, there’s a wealth of resources on the internet and lots of fantastic trans content creators on social media that you can interact with to find out more.