Indivior, the global pharma company, named McKinney as its U.S. agency of record (AOR) for in-market brands Thursday morning.

McKinney, the North Carolina-based creative agency, will serve as AOR for Indivior’s domestic Addiction Sciences and Behavioral Health business units. These segments were previously held by rival agencies Klick Health, Area 23 and Havas Tonic.

The firm will lead strategy, creative and digital for opioid addiction medicine Sublocade and schizophrenia treatment Perseris, with a focus on enabling omnichannel customer engagement. Indivior is a specialty pharma company based in Virginia that is primarily focused on developing treatments for patients that suffer from addiction or serious mental illnesses.

In addition to Indivior, McKinney has experience with pharma clients given its past work with Zhou Nutrition and Alcon Pharmaceuticals.

Securing the Indivior business is a major success for McKinney, which founded McKinney Health last June with support from industry veteran Michael McNamara. Originally, the firm’s health practice began with six health-specific staffers and the headcount now exceeds 40.

“This is a significant win for our McKinney Health group. We are excited to be working with Indivior and applying our award-winning strategy and creativity to these brands,” McKinney CEO Joe Maglio said in a statement. “This establishes McKinney Health as a key player in the industry and serves as a proof of concept for our innovative approach.”

The Indivior news comes more than three months after McKinney acquired influencer marketing agency August United from Audacious Studios.

There have been several notable AOR announcements in the healthcare and pharma industry in recent months.

In March, Heartland Dental, a dental support organization, named Fusion92, a Chicago-based marketing transformation partner, as its AOR. This followed a request for proposal from Heartland in the spring of 2022.

At the end of last year, Zócalo Health brought New York-based agency Autumn Communications on as its PR AOR. Two months prior, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America hired Ketchum as its AOR following a competitive pitch process.

One of the most notable AOR announcements of 2022 came in August when ViiV Healthcare named Havas Health & You as its single global AOR.