Health inequalities research involving the pharmaceutical industry globally: a scoping review
To assess health inequalities research involving the pharmaceutical industry and to highlight key themes and potential research gaps.
Briefly, a literature search of article titles on the Embase and MEDLINE databases was performed to identify relevant peer-reviewed literature published between 2000 and 2023. A review of gray literature sources and pharmaceutical company global websites was performed in parallel. Peer-reviewed literature and gray literature were excluded during pre-screening based on pre-defined eligibility criteria. Peer-reviewed publications that met the eligibility criteria underwent double-blind title and abstract screening to determine relevance to health inequalities research; gray literature was screened by one reviewer. All publications included after title and abstract screening underwent full-text review.
The peer-reviewed literature search yielded 1,377 initial results, of which 18 publications were included for data extraction; the gray literature search yielded 10 articles. Peer-reviewed publications involving the pharmaceutical industry increased over the past 5 years. North America was included as the region of research focus or study population in 61.1% (11/18) of the peer-reviewed publications. Health inequalities across race/ethnicity (66.7% [12/18]), sex/gender (44.4% [8/18]) and socioeconomic status (27.8% [5/18]) featured in the identified publications. Across the medicines and vaccines development and launch process, 71.4% (5/7) of the publications focused on increasing clinical trial participant diversity.
The pharmaceutical industry has contributed to the discussion on health inequalities, particularly over the past 5 years. However, industry can better take the wider determinants of health into consideration when designing strategies of evidence generation across the medicines development pathway.
Health inequalities describe the often unfair differences in the health of different groups of people. This could mean differences in people’s health or in factors affecting people’s health. There are different aspects that can lead to health inequalities, such as race and ethnicity, sex and gender, and income. Researching health inequalities may help to identify groups of people with an unmet need and help to make sure healthcare resources are spread fairly in the population.
We searched English-language articles and information published since the year 2000 to find out about the scientific research and activities that the pharmaceutical industry is involved in to address health inequalities.
We found 28 articles that met our criteria, which we reviewed in full. We found that there has been an increase in health inequalities research involving the pharmaceutical industry since 2018. Most of the research we identified included North America as the global region of research focus or study population. Race and ethnicity were the most frequently researched aspects of health inequalities.
Overall, we found that pharmaceutical companies are increasing their involvement in research and activities to help to reduce health inequalities. There is still a lot of work to do in health inequalities to ensure that people with an unmet need are not being overlooked and that healthcare resources are available to people who need them. This article includes a graphical plain language summary in the supplement.
