Happy 1st Birthday Haleon! Welcome Self-Care!

Haleon is an advocate of self-care. It brings a noticeable relief for the society and advantages for each individual. The result: more health in everyday life. Our approach: information and innovation – also with partners from the healthcare sector.

Today, Haleon celebrates its first birthday. Since last summer, we have achieved a lot with our teams around the world: new, innovative products from our popular and trusted brands have seen the light of day. Our social commitment has been just as successful as our measures to protect the environment. What I am particularly pleased about is that the DACH business unit is one of the driving forces within the company when it comes to the sustainable design of products and packaging. What all our product innovations and initiatives have in common: They are designed to make everyday health available to more people around the world.

Why #Self-Care is so important.

A significant highlight of the last 365 days was certainly our report named “Redefining the role of self-care” which we published in the spring. Among other things, it contains policy recommendations on how a comprehensive self-care culture could be realized. It is a great success that we were able to present and discuss this report in the European Parliament.

But why is the topic of self-care so close to our hearts? Quite simply, self-care is crucial for a working healthcare system. An appropriate self-care culture brings invaluable benefits for the individual and for society: fewer illnesses, which in many cases would be detected earlier and have less severe courses. In addition, more self-care would result in higher productivity and employability as well as lower treatment costs.

Current figures underline the need for self-care. They also show that we are on the right track with the concept:

·??????By 2050, almost one-third of the European population will be 65 or older. In this age group, one in three will have at least two chronic diseases.

·??????Europe already has a shortage of 50,000 doctors.

·??????1.2 billion minor ailments are self-treated in Europe every year. Without self-care, Europe would need 120,000 more doctors.

·??????In Germany alone, 188 million minor ailments are self-treated each year, in Austria the figure is 20 million and in Switzerland 19 million.

Health literacy is crucial

The biggest hurdle on the road to a comprehensive self-care culture? A lack of health literacy – which even the president of the German Medical Association (Bundes?rztekammer) recently complained about. And our self-care report also confirms this: It is true that it is important for the vast majority of Europeans to take their health into their own hands. But only one in five feels secure enough to do so.

So the first priority is to improve health literacy. It is essential that people have the knowledge and skills to take the best possible care of their own health. This includes being able to decide when the advice of healthcare professionals is needed. People can make the best health decisions when they have easier access to reliable evidence. Gathering evidence of what works in practice and clearly labeling scientifically validated information can help them do this. Together with pharmacists, PTAs, physicians and other health experts, we are working to expand health literacy among the population and make the information relevant to this more easily available.

Important role of pharmacies

In our view, pharmacies in particular play an important role in terms of self-care and health literacy. Local pharmacy experts can provide the necessary know-how in daily patient contact and thus ensure better health in everyday life. We support pharmacy teams with, among other things, training by trainers as well as e-learning and webinars in the "Haleon HealthPartner" online portal. In this way, we enable pharmacists to provide their patients with the best possible support in self-care. Incidentally, the Rx-to-OTC switch, in other words the release of medicines from prescription requirements, is also an important prerequisite for more self-care. After all, over-the-counter medications can improve access to effective treatment, increase patient autonomy, and reduce costs for governmental service providers.

As you can see, at Haleon we are constantly looking for ways to improve people's health and well-being in their everyday lives. We've already proven in our first year that we can achieve our goals. As General Manager of Haleon in DACH, I will do everything I can to continue this success story.

Stay healthy!

See you soon.

Kostas

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