How pharma is responding to patients' ESG concerns: patient perspectives and corporate action

How patient groups assess pharmaceutical companies' ESG performance

The latest survey by PatientView, a research organization specializing in the patient perspective, shows patient groups' interest in ESG issues is growing, and they are making their assessments of pharmaceutical companies public. In the 2023/24 survey, PatientView collected responses from 701 patient groups across 74 countries and 201 disease areas. The results show that the vast majority of responding patient groups consider all three dimensions — environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) — important to them, with social and governance issues drawing the most attention: 94% of patient groups said social impact performance is "important" to them, 88% rated corporate governance standards as important, while environmental performance came in at 67%. This reflects patients' higher expectations for pharmaceutical companies to perform well on social responsibility and ethical governance.
 

ESG performance plays a key role in patient groups' decisions about partnering with pharmaceutical companies. More than half of patient groups said that when weighing whether to build a partnership with a pharmaceutical company, they "often" or "sometimes" factor in that company's ESG record. Specifically, in the PatientView survey, about 83% of patient groups often or sometimes consider a company's efforts to address social problems.
 

That said, given the "anti-ESG" climate that has emerged in the United States in recent years, American patient groups have been comparatively less active in these ESG assessments, with response numbers below the U.S. average for PatientView's other studies. Even so, globally, the patient perspective has become a force that cannot be ignored in evaluating pharmaceutical companies' ESG performance. Notably, PatientView ranked 15 large pharmaceutical companies with clear ESG agendas, and Roche and Gilead Sciences topped the overall patient-perspective ESG rankings — a sign that some companies' ESG efforts have earned strong recognition from the patient community, giving them a reputational lead over their peers.

Pharma-patient group engagement: from treatment to ESG partnership

Although the pharmaceutical industry's ESG investment has grown substantially in recent years, much of the engagement between companies and patient groups still centers on treatments and medicines. Traditionally, collaborations between pharmaceutical companies and patient organizations have focused on product-adjacent areas such as drug support, disease education, and charitable donations. But patient groups' expectations of companies now extend beyond the medicines themselves. The PatientView survey found that patient organizations broadly believe pharmaceutical companies should define their role more expansively: helping improve patients' access to healthcare, raising the quality of the services they provide, and actively working to eliminate health inequities. These demands align closely with the social responsibility goals within ESG, and they are precisely where the patient community expects pharmaceutical companies to take ESG action.
 

In other words, a well-executed ESG strategy can become a new opportunity to strengthen patient trust. By working more closely with patient groups within an ESG framework, pharmaceutical companies can demonstrate that they value patients' needs and values, deepening mutual trust. PatientView's analysis of patient group feedback found that, to engage effectively in pharmaceutical companies' ESG activities, patient organizations most want to see improvement in two areas:
 

Building closer partnerships (43%): establishing and maintaining long-term relationships with patient groups, deepening ties, and co-designing ESG-related programs. This shows patient groups want to be partners in corporate ESG strategy, not passive recipients.
 

Demonstrating concrete action and clear communication (54%): patient organizations are calling on pharmaceutical companies to back their ESG commitments with substance (for example, tackling specific social and health problems) and to communicate those measures clearly, in ways that resonate with patients. A focus on genuinely improving treatment and care is part of the ask as well. Patient groups believe their trust in a company can only grow when they see real action and results.

The EU DMA's new challenges and global ESG trends

At the policy level, the EU's Double Materiality Assessment (DMA) is setting a new bar for ESG practice in the pharmaceutical industry. The DMA is a core principle under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), requiring companies, starting in 2025, to consider both "financial materiality" and "impact materiality" in their sustainability disclosures (EU Adopts Long-Awaited Mandatory ESG Reporting Standards). This means pharmaceutical companies must assess both how ESG issues affect their finances and how their business affects the environment and society (including patient communities), treating both as material disclosure content (EU Adopts Long-Awaited Mandatory ESG Reporting Standards). In the past, companies focused mostly on the risks and opportunities ESG posed to their own operations (single materiality); now they must also report their impact on external social stakeholders. For pharma, this shift puts patients squarely in the spotlight: from R&D and pricing policy to charitable programs, which actions genuinely improve the wellbeing of patients and communities will become a focal point of future assessment.
 

The rollout of the EU DMA is seen as a bellwether for global ESG governance. Beyond the EU, countries including Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the UK are considered likely to follow with similar mandatory ESG reporting and double materiality requirements. Companies will thus face stricter ESG disclosure and scrutiny across all major global markets. As a highly international industry, large pharmaceutical companies typically operate across Europe, the Americas, and Asia simultaneously, so building the mechanisms and data collection needed for double materiality assessments early is essential to complying with new rules everywhere.

Conclusion: from reputation to competitiveness — ESG as a new source of patient trust

Faced with patients' rising ESG concerns, the pharmaceutical industry is adjusting its pace and responding more proactively and transparently. PatientView's surveys and toolkits show that patient groups are willing to judge pharmaceutical companies by their ESG performance and to let that judgment shape their partnerships. For companies, this is both a challenge and an opportunity: connecting more closely with patients through ESG strategy builds more resilient trust and strengthens corporate reputation. At the same time, the evolving regulatory environment (such as the EU DMA) is turning patient impact into a hard metric in corporate sustainability reporting, further pushing the industry to put the patient perspective at the core of ESG.