Working with healthcare and pharmaceutical companies

Lymphoma Action has a policy governing our work with healthcare companies. Its purpose is to provide clear principles and guidance around how Lymphoma Action works with any healthcare company that provides products, drugs or services to people affected by lymphoma on a commercial or profit-making basis.

Lymphoma Action will establish working relationships with healthcare companies in order to achieve our aims and objectives without compromising our integrity or our ability to offer independent and unbiased information and support to people affected by lymphoma. We will also ensure that our campaigning and policy work is not in any way influenced by the commercial interests of such healthcare companies.

Basic principles

Lymphoma Action will:

• Establish working relationships with healthcare companies that provide products, drugs or services to patients on a commercial or profit-making basis, subject to the conditions set out in this policy, for the benefit of people affected by lymphoma.
• Ensure that we work with a variety of such healthcare companies, giving no preference to any one company in particular and seek to receive support from more than one healthcare company for each project, where possible.
• Only accept financial support from such healthcare companies in accordance with our ethical statement, which applies to accepting support from companies in general. We will not accept money from a source or activity that is illegal, where the relationship would be counter-productive to Lymphoma Action or where it is in direct conflict with our aims of supporting people affected by lymphoma (industry sectors which are incompatible with their wellbeing).
• Pay special attention to the principles and guidelines laid down in our Ethical Policy on the Acceptance and Refusal of Donations, which sets out the circumstances in which a donation can be accepted or refused. The policy also stipulates that as a Charity, we should maintain our independence. We value our corporate partners and our donors but cannot allow funders and corporate partnerships to affect our reputation or unduly influence our charitable activities. Accepting support from companies will not prevent us calling their actions into question or expressing our views. Nor can we endorse or approve products, services, commercial initiatives, companies or industries.
• Publish full financial disclosure of all sponsorship and other funding received from any healthcare companies in our annual report and accounts and our on website pages outlining their support.
• Ensure compliance with the Charity’s conflicts of interest policies relating to a) Trustees and staff and b) medical advisers acting as expert reviewers for our patient information.
• Ensure that all published materials relating to a specific activity are transparent in informing the nature of the relationship with any healthcare company sponsors.
• Ensure that under no circumstances will these companies influence our strategic direction, activities or the content of the information we provide to people affected by lymphoma.

Conditions

• All funding must be for activities that are within our strategic aims.   
• We only support healthcare company-initiated activities (whether funded or unfunded) that clearly demonstrate benefit to people affected by lymphoma, will further our strategic aims and are completely transparent.
• We can ensure compliance with the conditions of the ABPI Code of Practice 2021 and any other relevant regulation of healthcare companies.
• The relationship is not subject to any conditions that prevent us from acting in the best interests of people affected by lymphoma.
• Written agreements with healthcare companies are produced to document the agreed terms and conditions.
• We ensure our editorial independence is maintained so that we are free to comment in a balanced way about healthcare companies and their products. 
• The total amount of financial support from healthcare companies will not exceed 20% of our total budgeted income for the financial year (this includes donations, gifts in kind, sponsorship, etc.) and a financial cap of £80,000 of support from individual healthcare companies per annum (excluding employee fundraising), unless approval to accept a higher amount is granted by the Board of Trustees.
• We will not endorse or campaign for any specific product, drug or service in return for financial support.
• We reserve the right to campaign for access to specific treatments if advised by our expert medical advisory panel that they are effective and of benefit to people affected by lymphoma.