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Living & Wellbeing

Empowering Patients by Closing the Health Literacy Gap

When people understand basic concepts about their health, they’re better able to make more informed decisions.This common-sense idea is a fundamental tenet of personal health literacy, defined by health.gov as "the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others."1 And while it sounds like a simple notion, in practice it’s actually an enormous challenge. According to the Ce...

Advances in Cytomegalovirus Vaccine Development

While it may not be a household name, cytomegalovirus (CMV), a member of the herpes virus family, is incredibly common—many people acquire it as toddlers or adolescents, and a majority are infected by adulthood.1 In most people, CMV is harmless and causes no or few symptoms.2 However, it can pose a danger to babies infected in the womb along with immunocompromised adults.2 Roughly one out of every 200 babies are born with congenital CMV each year in the U.S., and 20 percent of those will...

Purpose & Ideals

Doing Better: Increasing Diversity in Clinical Trials

Diversity in clinical trials is key to equitable health outcomes. Increasingly, clinicians, researchers and patients are realizing that a lack of diversity in clinical trial participants may contribute to the stubborn persistence of health disparities, such as the fact that Black Americans are 30% more likely than whites to die prematurely of heart disease.1 After all, if a clinical trial for a new nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) drug doesn’t include an adequate number of Black participants...

Purpose & Ideals

Improving Metastatic Breast Cancer Care for Underserved Populations

Globally, breast cancer continues to be the most common invasive cancer in women, and one of the most common forms of cancer overall.1  While significant advances have been achieved, especially in metastatic disease, challenges beyond treatments remain, especially disparities created by structural, socioeconomic, socio-environmental, and biological factors. A recent 2021 publication reveals both the challenges facing underserved patient populations with metastatic breast cancer (mBC) in Europe...

Real People

Meet Dacia Young, a Senior Scientist within the Vaccine Research and Development Group at Pfizer

Meet Dacia Young, a Senior Scientist within the Vaccine Research and Development Group at Pfizer. Dacia has worked as a Scientist at Pfizer for more than 14 years, leading the assay development for our meningococcal disease vaccines since 2013. As a scientist working on vaccines in the middle of a pandemic, Dacia understands firsthand the tangible impact vaccines can have on public health. Now she’s discussing why she finds developing vaccines so rewarding, and explaining why she believes...

Living & Wellbeing

In His Shoes (or Hiking Boots): William’s epic solo adventure to help fellow hemophilia patients in need

When it comes to making the world a better place for people living with hemophilia—a rare disease characterized by inadequate blood clotting—William Addison doesn’t just talk the talk.1,2 And he doesn’t just walk the walk, either. William hiked the Appalachian Trail—all 2,200 miles of it—to raise funds for a charity dedicated to improving care for people with hemophilia and other bleeding disorders in developing countries. He completed the solo trek in about half the average time, all while...

Living & Wellbeing

Understanding Healthcare Disparities in Colorectal Cancer

In the United States, an estimated 147,950 people were diagnosed with cancer of the colon or rectum in 2020. It is one of the most highly diagnosed cancers in the US, with 12 percent of cases diagnosed in people under the age of 50.[i] Additionally, more than 20 percent of Americans with colorectal cancer have metastatic disease at diagnosis. Metastatic disease means the cancer has already begun to spread to other parts of the body.[ii] The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed flaws within healthcare...

Living & Wellbeing

Know the Mutational Status of Your Cancer: Biomarker Testing in Metastatic Melanoma and Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with metastatic melanoma or metastatic colorectal cancer, chances are you’ve had to familiarize yourself with a lot of new terms and complicated concepts. One term you may not have heard before is “biomarker.” As researchers learn more about how cancer cells develop, grow, and spread, more attention is being paid to the role biomarkers play in these processes. For patients, undergoing biomarker testing helps their doctor/healthcare team determine whether or not...

An Immune System “GPS” Uncovers Pathways to Treat Diseases

When it comes to understanding the immune system, we’re in the age of a data “traffic jam.” Thanks to advances in gene sequencing technology and decades of research, we’ve amassed a huge trove of information, but utilizing it to drive new insights can be challenging. A collaboration with Israel-based startup CytoReason is allowing Pfizer scientists to harness computational technology that functions as a “GPS” for the immune system. The tools help to unpack these complex data sets so they can...

Real People

Getting to Know Pfizer’s New Chief Medical Officer Aida Habtezion

Changing careers in the middle of a pandemic is no small endeavor. But when Aida Habtezion, M.D., learned about the opportunity to serve as Pfizer’s new Chief Medical Officer, she couldn’t pass it up. “I felt it was a chance to make an impact on the health of millions of lives around the world, at a time when it’s never been needed more,” says Dr. Habtezion. Having lived in four countries and on three continents, the global focus of her new position mirrors Dr. Habtezion’s own values. As Chief...

Setting the Stage for a Fight: Enlisting T-cells to Combat Multiple Myeloma

Caption: T-cells (orange) can be redirected to engage and destroy cancer cells (blue) through the use of bispecific antibody technology, which enables a bridge to be formed between surface proteins overexpressed on tumor cells and T cells. (Getty/ illustration) In our immune system, subsets of T-cells exist that are “professional killers”. They’re constantly patrolling the body to eliminate problem cells, such as those that may turn cancerous or are infected by viruses. But cancer, as we know...

Living & Wellbeing

Pfizer's New C. difficile Awareness Initiative Explained

Pfizer recently convened experts representing a cross-section of healthcare professionals and patient organizations for a panel titled, “Clostridioides difficile: A public health threat in plain sight.” They first met during a panel discussion that coincided with Infectious Disease (ID) Week in late-2019 and served as a launchpad for the C. difficile Awareness Initiative, which will help educate the public about Clostridioides difficile (pronounced: klos-TRID-e-OY-dees dif-uh-SEEL)and C...