In the past, I’ve written here to highlight things of interest for our individual, or retail, shareholders.  I’ve explained how changes to the rules of the New York Stock Exchange would affect shareholder voting, described some of the tools we offer on the Investor Relations section of jnj.com that make it easier for retail shareholders to stay informed about our company, and posted voting results immediately after our 2011 Annual Meeting of Shareholders.

Today, I’m excited to tell you about the newest resource we’re offering to keep our retail shareholders engaged.  We are the first corporation to team up with Moxy Vote, an innovative, online voting platform, which will provide another way for you to vote your shares at our shareholders meetings.

Moxy Vote is designed for retail shareholders who want one convenient place to vote all of their shares online and educate themselves on the items they will be voting on.  Moxy Vote also offers an opportunity for companies, like ours, to have direct dialogue on their website with our many different stakeholders, who are so vital to our long term success.  It’s an opportunity that aligns with our goals for shareholder communications and so we’ve decided to support Moxy Vote’s initiative in the shareholder communication and voting space.  Over 100,000 users have signed up to use Moxy Vote and so can you.  We encourage you to visit their site and check out what it’s all about.  You can read their blog post about J&J here.

We continue to add features on the Investor Relations section of our website for the convenience of retail investors.  We provide easy ways for both registered and street side shareholders to sign up to receive annual reports and proxy materials electronically.  We created a special Investor Relations web page optimized for viewing on mobile devices, and we optimized our earnings webcast for mobile streaming on iOS devices.  We’ve also made available audio podcasts of our Investor Relations events and video podcasts of our annual meetings.  We tweet updates from our annual meetings and earnings calls, and we’ve added links to third-party websites with general educational information about your rights as a shareholder and the proxy voting process.  I hope you are able to take advantage of there shareholder-friendly tools and also give Moxy Vote a look.

From Bryan Baugh, M.D., Medical Director, Janssen Therapeutics

It happens every year around this time. My memory floods with images and thoughts from my time before I joined this company: I’m brought back to my work as a physician treating HIV/AIDS patients in the African-American community of Southeast Washington, D.C.

My recollection is actually part of something much bigger this week,  as people around the country recognize the 12th National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD) on Tuesday, Feb. 7. This day of awareness is especially poignant when you consider the true burden of this virus behind the staggering statistics. Here’s just a few of the most compelling facts from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC):

•    While blacks represent approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population, they account for almost half of people living with HIV in the U.S. as well as nearly half of new infections each year.
•    Approximately one in 16 black men will be diagnosed with HIV during his lifetime, as will one in 32 black women.
•    Among blacks, men account for 70 percent of new HIV infections. Women account for 30 percent.
•    Within the African-American community, gay and bisexual men are the most affected, followed by heterosexual women.

When I heard the official 2012 theme for NBHAAD – I am My Brother’s/Sister’s Keeper: Fight HIV/AIDS – it really hit home.  It made me think about the people I knew from my time working as a physician, people who inspired me in many ways.  I’ve carried their inspiration forward and it helps me keep the people we serve foremost in everything I do.

So today, as part of my personal call to action to honor NBHAAD, I would like to share just some of what I’ve learned about the burden of HIV in the African-American community through some recent Janssen Therapeutics efforts.

I’ve learned that while progress can be made, more needs to be done to address the gap in HIV clinical knowledge on women of color, as demonstrated in a clinical study by our company called GRACE.  In medicine, I’ve heard it often said that its difficult to recruit people of color and women to participate in clinical trials. And I found this to be especially true from my work in the HIV community. While women of color are among the groups most impacted by HIV in the U.S., they have been underrepresented in HIV clinical trials. GRACE, which stands for “Gender, Race And Clinical Experience,” demonstrated that it is possible to recruit large numbers of women into HIV clinical studies in the U.S.

Through another initiative – a study of African-American frontline care physicians conducted by Janssen Therapeutics in collaboration with the National Medical Association, or NMA of which I’m a member – I learned that a variety of social stigma factors were found to be the largest barriers to routine HIV testing by these physicians.  We announced findings last August.

And last year I was again reminded of my time treating people with this virus, especially the intensely personal and emotional burden of an HIV diagnosis. I was viewing videos about four people – three of them people of color – who refused to let their HIV diagnoses define them and now help others living with this condition. Our company produced this series, The Journey: Portraits of People Living with HIV, in response to what we’d learned from the HIV community about the need to help those newly diagnosed deal with the common emotional barriers that often accompany an HIV diagnosis.

The four people featured in this educational series serve at AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) as peer advocates for others living with this condition.  Chad, Daniel, Hattie and Andre share their personal stories on the barriers to care they faced, and eventually overcame, including stigma, isolation, disclosure and acceptance. The videos launched in September on the Johnson & Johnson  Health Channel on YouTube.

Today, two of these video portraits speak with especially resonant voices: Hattie and Andre, two African-Americans living with HIV, one from Birmingham, Alabama and one from New York City, both peer advocates helping others with HIV. We’re pleased to feature Hattie’s video on the J&J Health Channel this week and invite you to view all four brief videos as a way to share the true meaning of this year’s NBHAAD theme  I am My Brother’s/Sister’s’ Keeper.

To learn more about the country’s National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, visit the U.S. Government’s resource and blog, AIDS.gov,  at:
http://aids.gov/awareness-days/#event-details

To learn more on the HIV and AIDS among African Americans, check out the CDC online fact sheet at
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-AA-FINAL508COMP.pdf

To find an AIDS service organization near you for support and services, visit AIDS.gov at  www.AIDS.gov/locator.

On Monday, January 30, Johnson & Johnson joined 12 other pharmaceutical companies, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. and U.K. governments, The World Bank, and endemic countries to announce a new, unprecedented collaborative effort to control or eliminate 10 Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) by the year 2020.

Here’s a video post from our Pharmaceuticals Worldwide Chairman Paul Stoffels, who gives our perspective about the Johnson & Johnson commitment to this effort, and talks about why this collaboration could serve as a new model for collaboration to address global health issues.  The post was taped on the day of the announcement last week.

]]> http://www.jnjbtw.com/2012/02/3577/feed/ 0 http://www.jnjbtw.com/2012/02/3577/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JnjBtw/~3/iHcVibPEa3Q/ http://www.jnjbtw.com/2012/02/letter-to-the-wall-street-journal-on-executive-changes/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:27:06 +0000 Bill Price http://www.jnjbtw.com/?p=3569 Continue reading →]]>  

The Wall Street Journal published a story yesterday on executive changes at the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies, and the Company has responded with the following letter to the editor from Ray Jordan, Vice President of Public Affairs and Corporate Communication for Johnson & Johnson:

January 31, 2012

Dear Editor of The Wall Street Journal,

In reporting on recent departures at the Johnson & Johnson Family of Consumer Companies (“J&J Shakes Up McNeil Unit Again”), your article got only some of the facts right, and the overall story wrong. Patrick Mutchler, to whom the President of our McNeil Consumer Healthcare business reported, chose to retire from Johnson & Johnson after 35 years of exemplary service to the company.  You inaccurately connected the departure of another senior executive, Pericles Stamatiades, to Mr. Mutchler’s retirement even though he had no direct responsibility for the McNeil business.

Through their contributions to our business, the leaders they have developed, and the many friends they made at Johnson & Johnson, Mr. Mutchler and Mr. Stamatiades have left an extraordinary legacy, and we will miss them. Perhaps most important, however, is the fact that McNeil Consumer Healthcare today remains under the same strong leadership of President Denice Torres, who stepped into her role last April.  The company continues to move forward confidently under her guidance.

Sincerely,

Raymond Jordan
Vice President, Public Affairs & Corporate Communication
Johnson & Johnson

Yesterday, we announced that Johnson & Johnson and the AOL-Huffington Post have launched an exciting new partnership called Global Motherhood. This partnership will give us the opportunity to share stories from many of our philanthropic programs, highlighting the outstanding work that our partner organizations do to make a difference in the lives of women and children around the world.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog on the Huffington Post, the launch of the Global Motherhood partnership offered the opportunity to share my quiet but long-held belief that the world revolves around mothers. As I visit villages, cities, townships, and remote rural areas in low- and middle-resource countries, I’m struck by the power of mothers as champions for the health and survival of their children, their families and, by extension, their communities. And I am touched and inspired by the dedication of the many people and organizations working to bring better health to mothers and children — including our partners like mothers2mothers, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Water.org and Tostan. These organizations demonstrate every day how community-based health education, basic health care and counseling, providing a foundation for girls to grow and learn, and training skilled birth attendants make an immediate and profound difference to women and children globally.

The stories behind the tireless work of these organizations often go untold. That’s one of the reasons that AOL-The Huffington Post and Johnson & Johnson have collaborated to create this forum focused on global motherhood and create a place to share ideas and experiences for improving maternal and child health. By highlighting the health issues facing women around the world, we will all learn more about what is working, why it is working, and how together we can do a better job addressing the most challenging issues.

A healthy world starts with healthy mothers. We hope that the Global Motherhood section will give voice to the people and organizations that are making a difference and inspire others to join in this effort. We invite you to visit that section often to read more about the featured organizations and about how you can become more involved.

Stories in this episode include an interview with Tina Sharkey, Global President and Chairman of BabyCenter, LLC, about the shared commitment to mothers and children and the new MAMA partnership;  a look at a high tech 3-D navigation system from one of our operating companies that provides views of the heart’s electrical activity; and the answers to the question posed to our worldwide employees in the last ennTV episode:  how do you hope people will describe the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies in the future…in three words or less?

Here’s the full episode:

And here are longer versions of each story:

BabyCenter:

The 3-D navigation system:

And how employees describe our company in the future in just three words:

Enjoy!

Mr. Weldon also reaffirmed the company’s commitment to Our Credo throughout the interview and described its significant role within our culture and our decentralized business model.

Here’s the full interview with Mr. Weldon at CNBC’s website:

Click here to watch the full interview

For additional perspectives on our approach to access to medicines and the Medicines Patent Pool, please click here.

Anyone familiar with our Company knows that our responsibility and commitment are always focused on the needs of patients.

This is more than a belief; it’s a way of life for my Global Access & Partnerships team. For people living with HIV in resource-limited countries, we work diligently to increase access and affordability for our HIV medicines.  We license our HIV medicines to generic companies to ensure they will be broadly available, and we operate our Global Access program on a not-for-profit basis.  We have a comprehensive effort to improve the health of women and children in the developing world, part of which is helping to ensure that no child is born with HIV. We are also working on a portfolio of child-friendly formulations of our HIV medicines so that kids living with HIV will have more treatment options.

And our greatest responsibility is ensuring we meet the needs of HIV patients today and for the future.

Earlier this year, we responded to a formal invitation from the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to begin negotiations to grant licenses to the patents for our HIV medicines. We expressed confidence that our direct agreements with quality generic manufacturers were providing the best route to expand access to patients in need.  After thorough deliberation and discussion, we continue to believe that this is the best approach to providing access to our HIV drugs today, so we have decided not to enter into negotiations with the MPP. Let me tell you why.

Our access efforts are working. Through our nine licensing agreements with generic manufacturers we are effectively and responsibly meeting the needs for our HIV medicines in resource-limited countries; five of these agreements include the rights to develop fixed-dose combinations. And we are collaborating with researchers to study further how our medicines can be used best to help patients in developing countries and providing medical education to ensure our medicines are used appropriately in these settings.

Some have suggested that sharing our IP with the MPP will immediately save the lives of tens of thousands or even millions of people living with HIV. But sadly, that is not the case. Our HIV medicines are not included in the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for HIV treatment in resource-limited settings. In these settings, providing HIV medicines for patients new to treatment (“first-line”) remains the top public health priority today; outside of the Americas, 97% of people receiving HIV treatment are on first-line. In resource-limited countries our HIV medicines are indicated for treatment-experienced patients (“third-line”). Treatment of 3rd-line patients is generally limited to a small number of “centers of excellence” where physicians have the specialist knowledge and access to HIV drug resistance testing needed to ensure the appropriate use of HIV drug combinations. These drugs are often the last option for patients. We remain concerned that the model put forth by the MPP could foster more widespread use of inappropriate combinations of these drugs of “last resort” that could adversely impact the future of HIV treatment globally.

Over the course of the last year, I’ve been asked a few questions about how the patent pool and intellectual property (IP) affect access to medicines.  I believe a few key issues are sometimes overlooked in this debate. First, it’s important to remember that the MPP is just one potential mechanism to share the IP, or patents, of HIV medicines – and that the MPP does not directly provide or manufacture HIV medicines for resource-limited countries.

Secondly, our intellectual property is not a barrier to access. We already proactively license our IP to responsible generic manufacturers, innovator pharmaceutical companies, and product development partnerships. But HIV drug access requires more than just intellectual property and reduced prices – it also requires registration of our medicines with local health authorities, supply capability, quality products and safety monitoring.  Our licensing agreements help provide these essential elements.

Effective HIV drug access requires a commitment to ensure that quality, affordable and safe medicines, used properly and safely. That is at the heart of our access efforts.

Over my past 30 years with the Company I have seen firsthand our impact in improving the lives of patients. This has never been more apparent than in our work to address HIV.

By Abraham Wright, Senior Project Engineer, Product Development, DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company

Water is essential to daily life: we use it to wash our dishes and clothes, to take a shower, and to drink. For me, I’m lucky to have access to clean water every day, which is pumped directly into my home, so all I have to do is turn on the tap. For many people living in the Central African Republic, water is gathered in springs, rivers, ponds and even puddles, and carried in buckets for miles, and is not sanitary.

About six years ago, I became involved in a non-profit organization, Integrated Community Development International, which attempts to change this situation by drilling wells in the Central African Republic with the aim of providing pure, safe drinking water.  These wells use a hand pump to bring the water out of the ground.  Unfortunately, due to low water tables in central Africa, some of the wells are 300 to 400 feet deep and the hand pumps that are commercially available are not sufficient.

Installing the pipe for one of the new wells

In response to this problem, I engaged a group of engineers that I work with at DePuy Orthopaedics, part of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, along with engineers in Ohio and Kansas, to volunteer their time to develop a pump that could provide access to clean water when the water is too deep for standard hand pumps.  We developed a progressive cavity pump (PCP) that is potentially able to lift water from depths up to 500 feet.

Assembling a pump for one of the wells

This project began more than a year ago and took hundreds of hours of our personal time in order to develop a properly working pump that could best serve the people of central Africa. This summer, my colleagues, Mark Heldreth and Greg Bixler, traveled to Africa to evaluate the current pumps and test the new replacement pumps at two sites: an under-producing pump at an orphanage in Berberati and an inoperable pump in the village of Yamando.  Here’s a link to more information and video of the trip.

“The goal of our summer trip was to remove the old pumps and install the new ones to see if they worked or if the designs needed to be modified,” said Mark Heldreth. “We learned the pump designs needed further adjustments. This month we are excited to get the pump working in the village of Yamando.”

The project isn’t over now that the team has returned to the United States. We continue to obtain long-term feedback and test data from Africa, which will assist us as we start the second phase of this project, which includes redesigning the pump based on what we learn to make it most effective and affordable for mass production. We plan to return as soon as summer 2012 with the new version of the pump to install in several villages in the Central African Republic.

It’s easy to take the little things for granted like being able to quench my thirst with a sip of water without leaving the comforts of my home. Knowing that the fruits of our labor have provided water to one village and will provide water to many villages in the near future has been a great experience for me and the rest of the team.

One of the wells providing access to clean drinking water

Here’s the link to a video about the Integrated Community Development International Water Project.

From Husseini K. Manji, M.D., Global Therapeutic Area Head for Neuroscience, Janssen Research & Development, LLC.

We’re on the cusp of a golden age for neuroscience. We’re probing deeper into the intricacies of the brain and beginning to see novel ideas translate into better lives for millions of people.

But to discover the next revolutionary idea, we need to come together as a field – government, academia and industry – and share knowledge, data, tools and models to enhance our understanding of disease biology, identify new treatment targets, develop new diagnostics and improve outcomes for patients with disease.

I’ve been involved in neuroscience research for more than 18 years, first at the National Institutes of Health and now at J&J, and I have experienced firsthand the decline in federal and industry support and the fragmentation of research between industry and academia, both of which have slowed the pace of progress. The science continues to be complicated and difficult, and navigating the road to solutions will require greater collaboration and cooperation. What is clear is that no single entity can get to the next great breakthrough working alone.

Fortunately, several recent initiatives are helping to advance funding and more effective methods for working together.

Earlier this month, both houses of Congress approved with bipartisan support an initiative developed by Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) that will make neuroscience research a top federal priority.

Also this month, the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson announced the launch of Healthy Minds, a significant new commitment to neuroscience-focused organizations, collaborative research initiatives and public education and awareness-building activities. Healthy Minds represents how strongly we believe that the solutions to disorders of the brain can be found through science if we continue to invest in new research and partnerships, all while working together more effectively.

Healthy Minds’ flagship commitment is the contribution of up to $3 million to the International Mental Health Research Organization (IMHRO) (www.imhro.org), to support One Mind for Research (1mind4research.org), a program of IMHRO committed to creating a united effort to advance translational research for mental health. One Mind for Research is strongly aligned with our vision that collaborative innovation and public private partnership is the most effective way to speed development of new approaches to preventing and treating disorders of the brain.

Through Healthy Minds, our goal is to leverage our 50+ year heritage in neuroscience research through innovative partnerships that help to develop new research programs, expand data sharing among scientists and physicians focused on the brain or central nervous system, break down barriers to understanding the molecular and cellular origins of mental and neurologic disorders, and help combat the stigma faced by those affected by brain diseases.

And it’s just the beginning. The human mind is vastly and minutely complex, and we understand only a fraction of how the brain works with its web of neurons and neurotransmitters, how to achieve complete brain health or what goes wrong when disease manifests. What we know is that the brain is the command center for the entire human body, the locus of “the mind” and the place where everything that makes humans unique is found. In some ways, our very existence and that of our children and grandchildren are dependent on solving the mysteries of the brain. What better investment could there be? Investing in the brain is an investment in humanity and ultimately, in our future.

For more information about our Healthy Minds initiative, I invite you to review today’s article in The Washington Post that discusses Healthy Minds and our contribution to improving mental health for soldiers and veterans or watch our video that illustrates what this initiative is all about.