After experiencing a brief boost during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharma industry’s reputation has begun to drop again in the public’s eye, according to a recent report.

Pharma’s corporate reputation fell throughout 2023 after reaching a peak in 2021 and 2022, according to PatientView’s annual pharma corporate reputation report released this week.

The report, which surveyed more than 2,500 patient groups around the world, sought to pinpoint how people in 106 different countries viewed the pharma industry between November 2023 and February 2024.

The survey included more than 40 pharma companies, including blue chip names like AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.

Of those drugmakers, ViiV Healthcare, Gilead and Roche finished in the top three spots. Among Big Pharma companies specifically, Gilead, Roche and Pfizer topped the list.

Fifty seven percent of patient groups said the pharma industry’s reputation was “excellent or good” in 2023, compared to 60% in 2022.

A handful of countries — including the Netherlands, Denmark, Taiwan and Sweden — saw an increase in the percentage of patient groups reporting that pharma had a top tier reputation. 

However, plenty of countries — including the U.S., Mexico, Germany and Finland — reported a drop in terms of how they viewed pharma companies.

Most patient groups pointed to several issues that they believe the pharma industry needs to address: pricing drugs more equitably, improving access to medications and allowing patients to have greater involvement in research and development.

More than half of surveyed patient groups said pharma companies are “fair” or “poor” at equitable pricing policies and had the same opinion of the industry’s ability to ensure access to medicines.

One national patient group focused on neurological conditions in Canada pointed out the drug shortages problem, which is plaguing medications from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to anti-seizure drugs.

“The pharma companies could play a role in better communicating the reasons, timelines to resolve, and actions being taken to resolve the shortages,” the patient group noted in a statement. “Otherwise, people are left in the dark.”

Another patient group based in the Netherlands lamented that pharma companies don’t engage patients enough in their R&D efforts.

“Most companies will publicly claim their strategies are patient-focused, but that’s just what’s written into documents, and doesn’t translate into meaningful actions across different areas of the company,” the patient group said in a statement.

During the pandemic, major drugmakers like Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca saw a boost in reputation linked to their speed and efficacy in producing vaccines and treatments for COVID-19.

However, in the years since, high drug costs have increasingly become a focus among the public and policymakers in the U.S. 

Lawmakers in Congress have sought to push forward more drug pricing reform, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT), who has called out pharma companies for their high price tags.

For a May 2024 article about pharmacists earning most consumer trust amid Big Pharma’s declining rep, click here.