Public Health Impact

Healthy Aging

At Pfizer, we are committed to helping people age well so they can live a healthy and full life at every step and at any age along the journey.

We are accelerating progress against this goal through a wide variety of efforts – forging unique partnerships around the world, creating tools to help raise awareness and measure impact, and supporting the urban environments in which more people are increasingly growing up and growing older.

Changing the Way America Ages

By 2030, one in five people in the United States (U.S.) is expected to be over the age of 65. As a result, people of all ages are evaluating what life will look like in their later years, and looking for information and tools to help them lead healthier lives.

This year, Pfizer challenged people across the U.S. to develop the next big idea in healthy aging through a unique partnership with crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. As part of this initiative, we leveraged roughly 400,000 individuals who are part of the Pfizer Get Old community and Indiegogo's vast pool of entrepreneurs to submit and vote on innovative products or services that support healthy living as we age. The best idea came from a team at Alchemi Labs and they received $50,000 in funding and had the opportunity to meet with Pfizer experts to help bring the idea from concept to reality.

Launching 'Get Old' in Latin America

In Latin America, we launched the Get Old healthy-aging campaign to inspire people to have positive attitudes about aging. Aging without Shame, in Brazil, and Aging with Pride, in other Latin America countries, aim to break the stigma associated with aging and motivate people to live their best possible lives.

  • In Brazil, the initiative had extensive reach, garnering more than 150,000 Facebook fans, 51,000 website page views, six million video impressions and more than 500 media articles published by local press
  • In Latin America, the campaign achieved more than 22 million impressions through traditional and social media, a video “¿Viejo Quién?” received more than 100,000 views, and there were 18 articles written by a Chilean Pfizer geriatrician and 119 articles published across markets

People over 60 are expected to account for more than 25 percent of the population in Latin America by 2050

We want to further a regional movement by which people understand that each stage of life is a new opportunity to make old dreams come true and build new goals.

Guillermo Azuero, Pfizer Essential Health Regional President for Latin America

Pfizer's Senior Intern

Paul Critchlow, a recently retired 70-year old professional with a 30+ year career in journalism, government and finance, joined Pfizer over the summer as our “Senior Intern.” Paul was one of approximately two dozen interns in the Corporate Affairs division and worked on several projects, including developing Get Old guest blog posts and collaborating on a video series the interns produced, titled “Senior vs. Senior.” Through this experience, Paul and the collegiate interns broke down generational barriers in the workplace and realized how much millennials and baby boomers could learn from each other.

Continuing Pfizer's Center of Excellence on Ageing

Pfizer's Center of Excellence on Active and Healthy Ageing is responsible for enhancing our ability to address the challenges and opportunities associated with an aging society by supporting a life-course approach to health, including developing partnerships with external groups to advance this agenda, as well as addressing life-course needs within the development of Pfizer's drugs, vaccines and products.

Colleagues representing a variety of functions from diverse geographies are voluntary members of the center which serves as a knowledge hub through which best practices are shared, and insights on healthy aging are generated. These scientific and medical findings are shared within Pfizer as well as with external partners.

Showcasing the Value of Vaccinations across Generations - #bandAGEofhonor

Children are not the only ones who can benefit from vaccinations against preventable diseases; it is critical that individuals across generations receive the vaccinations appropriate for each stage of life. We know that many people – especially those in the second half of their lives – are unaware of the importance of receiving potentially life-saving vaccinations. In response to this, Pfizer forged a partnership with Generations United to elevate global awareness of vaccinations across all generations. Together, we are working to accelerate patient impact in the prevention of disease, providing tools and resources, such as discussion guides, to encourage intergenerational conversations about getting vaccinated.

To ensure messaging for the campaign resonated with key age demographics, Generations United worked with the The Gerontological Society of America and the American Academy of Pediatrics to conduct focus group sessions and distribute resources to their constituents.

29.7mreaders via media outlets including The Boston Globe, MarketWatch, Reuters and Next Avenue

2.4mlisteners on The Diane Rehm Show

~2.5mTwitter and Facebook audiences

181,000international Twitter audiences

~2.3mhashtag impressions

60,500newsletter subscribers

50,000international readers

To learn more, please visit: www.bandAGEofhonor.org

Old woman being helped crossing the road

Creating Age-Friendly Cities – Progress in Ireland

Pfizer is helping support age-friendly cities with community-based programs across the world, including in Ireland. Age-Friendly Ireland continues to work on fostering a sustainable network of age-friendly towns (currently 22) across Ireland. To enable towns to become age-friendly, the program has successfully created a toolkit and an appendix of templates and examples of age-friendly town methodologies. A related suite of videos describes the age-friendly enabling process and how it has been used successfully. Other efforts in 2016 focused on encouraging older adults to take lead roles in enhancing their communities, creating an "Age Impact Assessment" tool/checklist appropriate for the Irish environment, and promoting the benefits of a multi-stakeholder approach in municipal planning.

In 2017, the role currently fulfilled by Age-Friendly Ireland in supporting the now national Age-Friendly Cities and Counties Programme will transition to a local government-hosted shared service.

How our work in this area is supporting the Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being

We promote holistic solutions to meet the health needs of the underserved while investing in the well-being of the global community.