FundaPen Campaign - Allergy New Zealand
Priority Communications is proud to provide pro bono support to the country’s leading allergy information, education and support charity – Allergy New Zealand.
One of our most significant pieces of work for Allergy NZ has been launching FundaPen - a highly strategic campaign to encourage the government and Pharmac to fund EpiPens® for all New Zealanders at risk of anaphylaxis, the most severe form of allergic reaction.
Adrenaline (epinephrine), which is best delivered through an EpiPen®, is the only medicine known to reverse the effects of a reaction and potentially save a person’s life.
What we did
For more than 20 years, Allergy NZ had been trying to get EpiPens® funded for the thousands of New Zealanders who suffer from anaphylaxis. This included eight submissions to Pharmac. With no progress being made, it was time for a new approach.
Thanks to a donation from Pub Charity in 2019, Allergy NZ and Priority Communications set to work developing and launching the campaign FundaPen, which resulted in nearly 3,000 children from Māori, Pasifika and low-income families receiving a free EpiPen®. It was followed up in February 2022 with FundaPen2, which delivered more than 3,300 EpiPens®. At the same time as providing much needed free adrenaline auto-injectors to people with severe allergies, the campaigns highlighted the fact that EpiPens® were not normally free to people who required them and this had to change.
Priority Communications provided strategic communications support, stakeholder engagement, government relations, media relations, and social media services. Both campaigns received an overwhelming response from the allergy community and were well supported by media.
Outcomes
As a direct result of the campaign, Pharmac announced in September 2022 that it would consult on funding adrenaline auto injectors for those who needed them. By December, Pharmac announced that from 1 February 2023 it would be fully funding two EpiPens® for every person at risk of anaphylaxis. Submissions during the consultation were 100 per cent positive.
Living with severe allergies is a topic close to our hearts in the Priority Comms’ team and we were delighted to deliver such an excellent result for the allergy community.
Allergy NZ CEO Mark Dixon said: “We had a single goal - to achieve government funding of two EpiPens® per year per doctor-diagnosed New Zealander at risk of anaphylaxis. We needed to engage multiple audiences with a complex concept and compel them to act in a way that would positively impact the people we represented - the allergy community. Allergy NZ believes that the combination and ultimate impact of the many moving parts over a sustained campaign period were bought to life for their audiences by an especially skilled and caring group of PR specialists in Christchurch – Priority Communications. Every member of the team was knowledgeable and genuinely invested in the decision to support us.”
