Corporate Responsibility
Our commitment: improving health through responsible business.
We are committed to creating a culture of integrity and we believe that, as a global leader in healthcare, we have a responsibility to serve as a role model in how we conduct our business. We focus our corporate responsibility work on two areas that underscore our mission, expanding access to healthcare and doing business responsibly. We care for our associates, contribute to our local communities, and strive to operate with high integrity and transparency.
Access to Healthcare
Taking Healthcare to the Villages
Realizing the gap between healthcare accessibility and awareness, Novartis India Limited started Arogya Parivar, a social business initiative that brings affordable medicines and health education to rural pockets.
The initiative was launched in 1996 as a pilot program in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and western Maharashtra. After a successful pilot phase, Arogya Parivar broadened its reach. This initiative is building a sustainable, profitable business that improves access to healthcare among the undeserved millions. The Company achieved this by creating awareness, enhancing local availability of drugs and designing affordable healthcare solutions.
Arogya Parivar is based on six “A’s” - Awareness, Adaptability, Availability, Affordability, Adherence and Alliances. These principles work in an integrated way to ensure long-term impact in rural areas.
Arogya Parivar and Novartis collaborates with others to help address some of the world’s greatest health challenges. To help do that, our corporate responsibility programs help more people secure the healthcare they need, regardless of where they live. We’ve done this for a long time, largely through philanthropic and not-for-profit programs. Because the number of people in need continues to exceed the capacity of corporate philanthropy, Novartis and other companies are turning to new ways of reaching people in need, by creating Social Ventures – shared value business models that complement philanthropic and zero-profit initiatives.
We concentrate our efforts on controlling and eliminating diseases such as malaria and leprosy, pioneering new business approaches to reach underserved patients, and finding new treatments and adaptive solutions to improve health for people around the world.
Corporate Social Responsibility
In India we have been actively supporting various initiatives in the areas of health, education and environment over the years. Our primary focus is on health where we strive to reach underserved patients followed by education. In the area of health we work where we have the ability to make a difference. Leprosy, where India has close to 60% of the world’s leprosy case load, tuberculosis, oncology and other non-communicable diseases receive our attention through partnerships with other like-minded agencies including hospitals, civil society, advocacy groups and academia.
Partnering with the community
A key corporate social responsibility is Community Partnership Week that is commemorated each year. This provides our employees all over India the opportunity to volunteer time for causes that make a difference in the local communities. Community Partnership Week continues to grow in stature with a rising number of associates participating in a diverse range of activities involving underserved communities and the less fortunate across the spectrum.
Watershed Project
On World Water Day, March 22, 2021, Novartis inaugurated an integrated watershed development project to help address water scarcity in the Telangana region of India, one of the world's most affected countries.
Our commitment: improving health through responsible business
We aim to improve global health. Through our business, we make an important contribution to society: We discover and develop innovative medicines. Novartis collaborates with others to help address some of the world’s greatest health challenges. We focus our corporate responsibility work on two areas that underscore our mission of caring and curing: expanding access to healthcare and doing business responsibly.
Expanding access to healthcare
We work to control and eliminate diseases such as malaria and leprosy, pioneer new business approaches to reach underserved patients, and find new treatments and adaptive solutions to improve health in developing countries.
Doing business responsibly
This is a core part of Novartis. We are committed to creating a culture of integrity and demonstrate ethical leadership – because as a global leader in healthcare, we have a responsibility to serve as a role model in how we conduct our business. We also care for our associates, work to positively contribute to our communities, and strive for environmental sustainability.
Grants
Novartis can provide reasonable financial support for the general purposes of supporting healthcare initiatives like improving medical infrastructure, independent medical activities, support for healthcare professional societies, health and medical policy research and patient group activities.