Winner
Turning the Tide – Corporate Affairs at AstraZeneca UK
Summary of work
The AstraZeneca UK Corporate Affairs team, supporting the NHS-facing business and working in close alignment with the UK HQ teams, has delivered transformational business impact in 2023, despite facing multiple extremely challenging situations . Integrated and focused corporate affairs work has played a leading role in negotiations of the new VPAG, reinvigorated our digital channels, launched new partnerships with Governments and key organisations and secured important media coverage, including top tier coverage of all 14 HTA decisions in 2023. In addition to a wealth of strategic outputs the team has achieved seven pre-specified policy changes leading to, among other things, protection from flu for millions more children, full funding for the national lung cancer screening programme and significant increase in severe asthma patient access to treatment. These corporate affairs achievements are all triple-wins: benefiting patients, supporting the NHS, and delivering against core business imperatives.
The work of the team has secured internal support for growth and extension of responsibility. More importantly, this work, has reset external conditions and internal perceptions, allowing for new capital investment by AstraZeneca into the UK, supporting new jobs and further improvement of the UK life sciences ecosystem.
Judges’ comments
AstraZeneca was the clear winner in this category. The team showed true industry leadership in terms of its VPAS/VPAG negotiations. It demonstrated a real focus on patients with its flu vaccination and lung cancer screening programmes, and steady stream of positive HTA submissions. The truly integrated team had a clear and focused strategy, and had moved the needle in 2023 from a function delivering internal communications to a truly strategic partner within the AZ business and wider UK market.
