Leena Johns, MD, Head of Health & Wellness at MAXIS GBN, talks about the value of using real data to determine what's effective for employers.

Join us on May 9 at 10 AM. It's free, and all are welcome to attend. Learn more and sign up now.

3 reasons why your school will want to join this year

This year, we're hoping all edHEALTH schools will consider joining our 5^th annual walking challenge There are many great reasons your school will want to promote and encourage employee participation in this edHEALTH-sponsored event. Here are three to start:

1) Promotes an easy way to support healthier living, in which most people can participate

2) Generates excitement with weekly raffles to keep your faculty and staff engaged in wellness

3) Costs your school nothing to participate as edHEALTH pays for the raffles in which participants from all schools are eligible to win

When you’ll learn more: In mid-May, you’ll receive details from us about the edHEALTH Walking Challenge that kicks off on Monday, June 6, 2022.  

Our wellness platform partners at Point32Health are including more activities and challenges within the walking challenge’s platform before and after the walking challenge dates of June 6 – July 4, 2022. Their Living Well program, which uses the same platform as our walking challenge, is a big value-add for edHEALTH schools! It’s available to all edHEALTH schools regardless of your health plan offering. (Note: If you have a custom wellness program with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care or Tufts Health Plan, your custom program continues as is.)

Last month we highlighted how both costs and utilization are increasing costs when it comes to prescription drugs. Much of the increase is due to the rise in specialty medications. This trend is national, across all industries, and continues to be of great concern. The rising costs of medications result in potential barriers to patients’ ability to afford and/or access the drugs they need to be as well as possible.

The Public Health Safety Act defines biosimilarity to mean, “The biological product is highly similar to the reference product notwithstanding minor differences in clinically inactive components and . . . there are no clinically meaningful differences between the biological product and the reference product in terms of the safety, purity, and potency of the product.” 

The simplest way to think about biosimilars is by considering them almost generics for biologics. Biologics aren’t easy to imitate, as living cells are unique. GoodRx notes that biosimilars are like biologics in their structure, function, safety, and effectiveness. They are not, however, the same as the actual biologic medication. As its name suggests, they are similar to their respective biologic in terms of safety and effectiveness. The Research Advocacy Network, in its Introduction to Biosimilars Medicine downloadable resource, clearly illustrates the key differences between biologics and biosimilars in this graphic:

To date, there are 35 biosimilars available in the United States. You will find FDA-approved biosimilars for popular specialty drugs like Humira, Enbrel, and Remicade—which treat autoimmune conditions like Crohn’s or Rheumatoid Arthritis. There are also biosimilars for diabetes, certain cancer drugs, eye conditions, and more."

Didn't have a chance to complete our survey? Email your ideas and opinions at any time to Lisa Barnstein. We always welcome feedback so that we can make our communications more useful for our member-owner schools.