Together for More Health
1. Brief description of the project:
In 2021, the PR Play team was engaged by the Association of the Research-Based Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (ARPharM) to carry out a campaign to increase public investment in healthcare – “Together for More Health”.
Such a campaign was needed because of the insufficient public resources for medicines and the introduction of innovative therapies, the high percentage of co-payments for medicines by patients, which often leads to compromise of their treatment due to it being interruption, as well as the few funds provided in the Budget.
The main goal of the campaign was to ensure the provision of more public funding for health care for 2022, and hence to increase funding for therapies. Achieving this was at risk, as the campaign took place in the context of the global crisis caused by Covid-19, which clearly highlighted the fact that the health system in Bulgaria was not prepared to deal with it, low levels of immunization, high morbidity and first place in terms of virus mortality in the EU.
The campaign also took place during a hard political crisis – 3 parliamentary and 1 presidential elections and 3 caretaker governments. All this has led to political struggles and repeated reshaping of the state budget for 2022, and hence the money for health care.
The Bulgarian Medical Association and the Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union were involved as partners.
The messages of the campaign were supported by facts from nationally representative opinion poll and expert economic analysis.