Disease prevention and treatment
What is Disease prevention and treatment at AstraZeneca?
Company activities aimed at preventing the onset and progression of diseases (including non-communicable diseases).
Our approach
Disease prevention and treatment occur along a journey to improve health. Many of our tactics include elements of both. We put our commitment to health into action through internal prevention and treatment initiatives with our workforce, as well as external programmes with our patients and partners. We are energised by the promising outlook of alternative ways of providing healthcare, such as integrating digital solutions into the patient experience through wearables. See more in Investments in health systems and Workforce wellbeing and safety.
Our targets and progress
Our stories
A step on our journey to eliminate cancer
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death. It claims a life every 18 seconds.1 And only one in five people are alive five years after initial diagnosis.2
We have a bold ambition to eliminate lung cancer as a cause of death. We know that we cannot do this alone, so we joined The Lung Ambition Alliance, a collaboration with the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), Guardant Health, and the Global Lung Cancer Coalition (GLCC). The objective is to double the five-year survival rate for lung cancer patients. The Lung Ambition Alliance is focused on raising awareness of the strong evidence for screening, addressing barriers to early detection and increasing diagnostic accuracy.
Empowering asthma HCPs and patients with knowledge
Nearly 70% of adults with asthma may have too many cells called eosinophils. Having too many eosinophils can lead to more asthma attacks and worse outcomes for patients. Unfortunately, many patients and physicians are not aware of the role that eosinophils have on asthma control and therefore do not test for them. To help bridge this gap, AstraZeneca employees launched a free blood test for patients to check their eosinophil number. Patients can take this information to their physician, bringing them a step closer to getting on the right track to better asthma control.
Young Health Programme (YHP) of AstraZeneca
Many noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are influenced by a set of defined risk factors: tobacco use, the harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and exposure to air pollution. Approximately 70% of premature deaths from NCDs can be linked to behaviours that started in adolescence.3
Our Young Health Programme addresses this situation. In 2019, YHP reached almost one million young people with health information on NCDs and risk behaviours and trained more than 8,500 peer educators and healthcare workers. We launched new programmes in Myanmar, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam, bringing the total number of countries with active programming to 18.
References
1. http://gco.iarc.fr/today/data/factsheets/cancers/15-Lung-fact-sheet.pdf. Accessed August 2019
2. www.cancer.net/cancer-types/lung-cancer-non-small-cell/statistics. Accessed May 2019
3. https://www.who.int/global-coordination-mechanism/ncd-themes/ncd-and-youth/en/