Collaboration & Co-Creation

EcoVadis Helping Pharma Giants to Improve Global Health Supply Chain

The Responsible Health Initiative aims to fortify responsible business practices throughout healthcare value chain

By Sustainable Brands | Published 5 years ago | About a 2 minute read

Image: Holger Link (via Unsplash)

Multinational health and pharmaceutical giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Teva and Takeda have partnered with EcoVadis — the leading provider of sustainability risk and performance ratings for global supply chains — to launch the Responsible Health Initiative (RHI). The mission of the new initiative is to collaborate on technologies to improve the visibility, efficiency and sustainability impacts of the global health supply chain.

“As business models across the health and pharmaceutical industries continue to evolve and overlap, it makes sense for organizations to focus on shared needs, goals and opportunities in sustainability, and act on them through the collective industry supply chain,” said Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-CEO and co-founder of EcoVadis. “Peer collaboration is a proven model for enabling companies in any sector to easily harmonize sustainability performance measurement and extend visibility. We are confident the Responsible Health Initiative will help create the networked impact the healthcare industry needs.”

The effort will increase shared value across the industry’s supply chain by enabling key players in the global health sector to boost not only their own sustainability performance, but also that of the industry’s collective group of suppliers. The initiative will be powered by EcoVadis’ platform and scalable methodology, which offers deeper transparency and insight into supply chain corporate social responsibility practices.

RHI marks the sixth sector collaborative managed by EcoVadis and will take learning from these other collaborations — Together for Sustainability, Railsponsible, AIM-Progress, the Joint Audit Cooperation and the Responsible Beauty Initiative — into account.

The shared vision for the Responsible Health Initiative includes:

Harmonizing industry standards for online CSR assessments, with reliable indicators and global benchmarks
Adopting a common platform to ease sharing of CSR performance among suppliers/third parties and RHI members
Implementing shared tools to boost supplier engagement and improvement plans
Working together to reduce risk and increase visibility in the supply chain

Members of the RHI will be equipped to access untapped sustainability potential across the industry supply chain, identify high-performing suppliers and best practices, reduce operational disruptions, mitigate risk and drive value with suppliers.

“Being part of the Responsible Health Initiative will help us leverage digital sustainability intelligence to more effectively select and partner with suppliers who share our values,” said Val Monk, Head of Ethics and Risk Programs at GSK.