Global Access & Health

Management Approach

Throughout our nearly 150-year history, Lilly has worked to address some of the most pressing health challenges facing humanity, including infections, diabetes, depression, cancer and obesity. In 2024, we estimate that more than 58 million people used Lilly medicines. However, our impact on health goes beyond the medicines we discover, develop and manufacture.

Through our global health efforts, Lilly is committed to addressing complex health challenges around the world. Our efforts focus on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and people living in resource-limited communities in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We are committed to expanding equitable and affordable access to our breakthrough medicines so that they can transform more people’s lives.

We work across industry boundaries, providing catalytic support to leading health organizations at the global, regional and local levels. We also work with organizations that have the knowledge and capabilities to enhance education, diagnosis, treatment and care of people living with NCDs. To drive progress, we established Lilly 30x30, the company’s global health model which aims to improve access to quality health care for 30 million people living in resource-limited settings annually by 2030.

Why NCDs?

The human toll of NCDs, including cancer and diabetes, is growing. According to the World Health Organization, NCDs are the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming the lives of at least 43 million people in 2021 with 73% of NCD deaths occurring in LMICs, where infrastructure and resources can be limited. Lilly’s current portfolio of medicines and pipeline are focused on NCDs. Beyond our scientific innovations, we believe our deep knowledge and expertise can help close healthcare gaps and help address the growing burden of NCDs for people living in resource-limited communities in the US and LMICs.

Pricing Around the World

Our products are sold in approximately 95 countries around the world. Each country values medications and innovation differently and must balance competing demands for finite resources, including other healthcare products and services, as well as meeting social needs, such as education or infrastructure.

Pricing medicines to achieve the optimal balance between affordable patient access and sustained investment in innovative treatments is complex. How to price medicines is one of the most important decisions we make as a company. When pricing a medicine, we use a value-based approach, reflecting the value provided to patients, providers, payers, caregivers, health systems and society. The approach also considers competitive dynamics and other factors. Drawing from this information, we evaluate country-specific conditions when pricing medicines on a market-by-market basis to help ensure patients around the world have affordable access to the innovative medicines we develop.

We support public policies to meet this same end. We explore new pricing and reimbursement models in different markets, and we advocate for policy changes that help increase access to medicines while protecting and enabling development of new medicines. For example, we support value-based and outcomes-based reimbursement models that can deliver greater health and economic value to health systems.

As a global company, we are aware that patients in LMICs face economic circumstances that may limit their ability to pay for health services and medicines. In response, Lilly is deploying alternative business models (see Lilly 30x30 below) and innovative collaborations to help provide high-quality, affordable Lilly medicines in these markets. We also support efforts to decrease the final price of medicines to patients in these countries, such as minimizing out-of-pocket costs and limiting markups across the supply chain.

Intellectual property (IP) protections play a central role in driving innovations that result in better patient outcomes. Additionally, IP protections provide the necessary incentives to enable the global health ecosystem to operate. At Lilly, we use patent rights to protect meaningful innovation that enables sustainable investment in the high-risk and costly research and development required to discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines. At the same time, we respect that of those IP rights, patents are limited in scope and duration, and we support robust generic and biosimilar competition when patent protections expire. Lilly is deeply committed to promoting both world-leading innovation and lower out-of-pocket costs for patients.

Sustaining robust, reliable, predictable, and enforceable IP frameworks also promotes the pursuit of breakthroughs in areas of unmet need, such as Alzheimer’s disease and antimicrobial resistance. By allowing some certainty in an otherwise high-risk, and high-investment endeavour like medicines development, IP protections keep the engines of innovation operating at full speed.

IP protections also improve patient access by expanding the innovation base, providing the pipeline for and driving entry of biosimilars and generics. Because of the limited duration of patent protections, expiration of those protections allows for shifts to generic and biosimilar medicines. These products create financial savings for patients and create budgetary headroom for health systems to expand access to newer medicines. Lilly supports healthy markets for generics and biosimilars, including removal of regulatory, pricing, reimbursement and access barriers when patent protections expire. In addition, Lilly continues to engage in approaches to patent in Least Developed Countries that takes into account their unique challenges. These may include voluntary licensing, non-assert policies or selective approaches to filing, in addition to supporting capacity-building initiatives which can foster a dynamic local innovation ecosystem.

In 2021, Lilly joined the IP PACT (IP Principles for Advancing Cures and Therapies), a multi-company initiative affirming the biopharmaceutical industry’s commitment to innovation and keeping patients at the center of our work. The IP PACT includes ten principles guiding the way our industry uses IP, including to facilitate collaboration and partnerships, to act responsibly in patent proceedings and to support vibrant generic and biosimilar markets. The principles are intended to balance the needs of patients, society and our business — to further healthcare innovation and help patients live longer, healthier lives.

Lilly 30x30

Through investments in people, medicines and health systems, we strive to improve access to quality healthcare for 30 million people living in resource-limited settings annually by 2030. We call this global model Lilly 30x30. To achieve our goal, we are leveraging company resources and working with leading health organizations to increase access to medicines, including Lilly medicines and address complex global health challenges. We work to enhance health across three areas of impact:

Pipeline – discovering medicines, repurposing internal assets and supporting external pipelines
Programs – strengthening and creating new programs that help improve access to Lilly medicines
Philanthropy (and other initiatives) – supporting efforts that strengthen health systems, improve access to care and better health outcomes.

In each of these areas, we are working to develop high-impact, scalable and sustainable solutions for people living in communities with limited resources, including by supporting and leveraging local and regional capabilities.

Governance of Lilly 30x30

To embed accountability throughout the company, Lilly 30x30 is governed by a steering committee of 14 senior executives, including six Executive Committee members and the Head of Social Impact. Reporting to the CEO, this committee oversees management of key priorities and operational milestones to measure our progress and help ensure Lilly 30x30 is strategically aligned with our business and core purpose of making life better for people around the world.

As a medicine company, our greatest contribution to global health is the discovery and development of innovative medicines. We continue to engage external organizations with the goal of developing innovative solutions for diseases disproportionately affecting people living in resource-limited settings. Lilly has committed $50 million to investing in venture capital firms that specialize in near- and long-term healthcare solutions for patients in LMICs. Existing investments include but are not limited to:

LeapFrog Emerging Consumer Fund IV. LeapFrog is an impact growth equity fund investing in South and Southeast Asian and African businesses that, among other priorities, provide innovative healthcare solutions to low-income consumers by offering relevant and affordable products to promote wellness and help prevent and manage chronic diseases.

Global Health Investment Corporation’s (GHIC) Global Health Security Portfolio. The Global Health Security portfolio is focused broadly on medical countermeasures that will better position the world to respond to or prevent public health emergencies, including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics, manufacturing platforms, and other critical technologies.

Lilly continues to be a top-tier investor in the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund, with $100 million committed over the life of the fund. The AMR Action Fund was launched in 2020 by more than 20 leading biopharmaceutical companies, including Lilly. Joining forces with global charitable organizations and development banks, the AMR Action Fund aims to accelerate antibiotic development. To date, the fund has made investments in ten U.S., European, and Asian biotech organizations with pipelines targeting a range of infections.

In 2023, through Lilly 30x30, we launched a new process to systematically evaluate internal assets to identify product development and access planning strategies for LMICs with the goal of accelerating our reach and scale. We will continue to explore potential opportunities and business development models that further support the development of our Lilly 30x30 pipeline, including venture impact investing.

Through Lilly 30x30, we are strengthening our existing programs and developing new approaches to improve access to Lilly products and services for people living in resource-limited settings. These efforts include exploring alternative business models and expanding access strategies and patient support programs

Patient Support Programs
Lilly offers a variety of affordability solutions through patient support programs and co-pay assistance across the major products of our portfolio, including medicines for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, migraine, immunology and cancer. We offer these programs across the globe.

Our patient support programs fall into three categories:

supporting patients through reimbursement and product access issues

answering questions related to living with disease and managing health

providing information on Lilly medicines and training on Lilly devices.

Alternative Access Programs
Lilly offers alternative access programs in addition to standard pricing, reimbursement and access models. These programs facilitate appropriate patient access to Lilly medicines by addressing specific challenges faced by patients, institutional payers, or channel partners.

We are also advancing manufacturing and public-private partnership-based solutions to expand access to our products in the countries where Lilly currently has no or limited presence.

An important program milestone is Lilly’s collaboration with EVA Pharma, which was launched in 2022 to deliver a sustainable supply of high-quality, affordable human and analog insulin to at least one million people annually living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes in LMICs, most of which are in Africa.

In 2024, Lilly and EVA Pharma announced the registration and release of the first locally manufactured insulin glargine injection in Egypt.

Also, in 2024, Lilly and EVA announced a collaboration in which Lilly will license certain baricitinib manufacturing know-how to enable EVA Pharma to manufacture and supply the product across 49 LMICs in Africa. Discovered by Incyte and licensed to Lilly, baricitinib is for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, alopecia areata, atopic dermatitis, and COVID-19.

Lilly Global Health Highlights

UNICEF – In 2022, Lilly and UNICEF announced an initiative to improve health for 10 million children and adolescents living with or at risk of chronic NCDs through 2025. Lilly committed $14.4 million to UNICEF USA to support life-saving work to address NCD risk factors, strengthen health systems and enhance the ability of healthcare workers to care for people in Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, Zimbabwe and the Philippines. In 2024, Lilly expanded its charitable contribution to UNICEF USA by $6.54 million to include resource-limited settings in India and improve health for 6 million children and adolescents living with or at risk of chronic NCDs in India through 2030 along with $500,000 for implementation research projects. The selected countries have the potential to strengthen country-level health systems and models that provide care and support for children and adolescents with chronic conditions, including type 1 diabetes, congenital and rheumatic heart disease, sickle cell disease and chronic respiratory diseases (e.g., asthma). More than 6.6 million people have been reached through UNICEF’s work during 2024 including clinicians, community health workers, district trainers, caregivers, children and adolescents. Note: UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product, or service.

AMPATH (Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare) – Lilly product donations to Catholic Medical Mission Board have supported the AMPATH Kenya initiative which totals to more than $255 million – including more than $4.3 million in medicines in 2024 – helping people living with cancer, diabetes and mental health disorders. Most recently, Lilly provided more than $3 million donation to Indiana University Foundation to support efforts related to the AMPATH Mexico initiative. The charitable initiative aims to transform primary healthcare for NCDs through training and deploying community health workers and early-career healthcare providers to address diabetes and related NCDs, with potential reach of over 3 million people in resource-limited settings by 2030.

Life for a Child – Since 2009, Lilly has provided over 10.6 million vials and cartridges of insulin related to support of the Life for a Child program. The program supports children and youth with diabetes in resource-limited settings by providing insulin, delivery devices, monitoring supplies, medical care, diabetes education, complications screening and management, and advocacy. In 2021, Lilly announced plans to expand support for Life for a Child, aiming to reach approximately 150,000 children and youth annually by 2030. To enable this, Lilly increased contributions of mealtime and basal insulins, reusable pens, and financial support for storage, packing, and shipping costs in collaboration with Direct Relief. In 2024, more than 53,000 children and youth were supported by Life for a Child with Lilly insulin.

CEO Round Table (CEORT) in-country programs – The rise of NCDs emphasizes the need for multi-sector engagement to strengthen health systems and integrated service delivery using digital tools. Alongside separate support provided by the Gates Foundation and industry peers engaged through CEORT programs, Lilly provides donations to US charitable organizations supporting the implementation of charitable programs on the ground in Sub-Saharan Africa:

AYA Integrated Healthcare Initiative (AYA): Lilly is donating nearly $3 million to Panorama Global related to its support of implementation of the AYA project in Ghana, which aims to improve NCD care at the primary health level. It includes training, guidelines, and digital tools to reach an estimated 2.2 million people in resource-limited settings.
Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS): Lilly's $1.7 million donation to Panorama Global related to its support of the implementation of projects expanding POCUS capacity in Kenya for early diagnosis of NCDs like obstetrical complications, heart failure, and breast cancer, benefiting approximately 550,000 patients in resource-limited settings.
Digital Mentor: This project in Kenya aims to train 20,000 frontline workers using AI tools to improve CHW productivity. It is estimated to reach 5 million people in resource-limited settings. Lilly is donating $800,000 to Panorama Global to support the implementation of this project.
Growth Accelerator for Integrated NCD Services (GAINS): Lilly's $500,000 donation to Touch Health aims to support its deployment of 140,000 Community Healthcare Workers in Tanzania by 2028, enhancing primary healthcare access through integrated community services and digital health systems.

Diabetes Impact Project – Indianapolis Neighborhoods (DIP-IN) –Lilly committed $12 million to the DIP-IN project, focusing on three Indianapolis communities with high diabetes prevalence. Launched in 2018, DIP-IN aims at diabetes prevention and control. The project leverages resident steering committees to lead neighborhood-based health promotion initiatives, expanding access to health-supporting resources and improving overall health. It includes neighborhood- and clinic-based community health workers (CHWs) to identify people living with or at risk of developing diabetes and connect them to quality care. Led by Indiana University Richard M Fairbanks School of Public Health and other organizations, more than 788 people with diabetes have worked with DIP-IN CHWs, resulting in a significant reduction in HbA1c levels.

See more details about the work and the organizations Lilly supports.

Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations to Advance the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

We are members of several multi-stakeholder collaborations focused on tackling global health challenges, including:

Access to Oncology Medicines Coalition (ATOM) – A global initiative to improve access to essential cancer medicines and increase the capacity to use these medicines appropriately in low-middle-income countries.
Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines & Products – A global, multisectoral coalition dedicated to increasing access to medicines and health products for NCDs to reduce the impact of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
NCD Alliance – A global thought leader on policy and practices related to NCDs.
Partnership for Quality Medical Donations (PQMD) – A global collaboration that brings together global medical-product companies and humanitarian organizations to promote sustainable access to quality healthcare in underserved communities during times of crisis.
Access Accelerated – Unites leading biopharmaceutical and life science companies in a forward-thinking global collective dedicated to mounting a sustainable and scalable response to NCDs in LMICs.

Product Contributions

In 2024, Lilly and its affiliates provided more than $4.2 billion in medicines to charitable organizations that offer free Lilly medicines to qualifying patients around the world.** This includes product contributions used by third parties for patient assistance programs and humanitarian efforts and support of product donation programs, noted above.

As part of these efforts, Lilly donates medications to the Lilly Cares Foundation (Lilly Cares), a separate US nonprofit organization. The Lilly Cares' Patient Assistance Program provides qualifying patients in the U.S. with financial need prescribed Lilly medications at no cost. In 2024, Lilly Cares helped more than 164,000 people obtain prescribed medications across the therapeutic areas of diabetes, immunology, neuroscience, cancer, pain, endocrinology, cardiovascular and bone, muscle and joint. Over the past 20 years, Lilly Cares has helped more than 1 million patients with financial need receive medicines donated by Lilly.

**Products valued at wholesale acquisition cost.

Global Health Highlights

Includes value of medicines provided by Lilly and its affiliates to charitable organizations that offer free Lilly medicines to qualifying patients. Product contributions valued at wholesale acquisition cost.
Includes financial commitments from Lilly and from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, a separate non-profit organization, commonly referred to as the Lilly Foundation.