This August is Psoriasis Action Month, and we’re joining the National Psoriasis Foundation in educating the community about how psoriasis is about ‘All of Us.’ This theme truly resonates – psoriasis is not a skin disease but a systemic one impacting the whole body, and it’s a condition that impacts all populations, no matter your background. It also takes ‘All of Us’ – patients, their loved ones and health care providers, advocacy groups, and many more stakeholders – having a seat at the table to improve care and outcomes for people living with psoriasis.

Everything we do at UCB starts by first understanding the disease journey through the patient’s eyes. With that in mind, we have a unique structure including a team called Ecosystem Partners, who focus on finding and bridging the gaps in care. The Ecosystem Team’s mission is to identify partners in healthcare who share in the desire to champion a better path forward for patients. They are committed to understanding and elevating the patient voice, so that we can transform care as patient allies together. 

Recently, we assembled a diverse group of stakeholders who are deeply knowledgeable about psoriasis, including patients and their allies in the health care space, to co-create a Psoriasis Care Gap Map. This started with interviewing more than 30 people living with psoriasis to anchor in the end-to-end patient experience. Then we held virtual workshops with patients, health care providers and administrators to layer on their perspectives and co-create tangible ways to bridge identified gaps in care. We plan to pilot some of these potential care solutions within the health care space later this year. 

The theme ‘All of Us’ also rings true when we think about coordinated care efforts in psoriasis and other chronic conditions. Coordinated care is organizing and sharing a patient’s information across all care providers (e.g., primary care physicians, nurses, dietitians, pharmacists, behavioral health specialists, rheumatologists, and dermatologists) to help achieve safer, more effective care. This is incredibly important in psoriasis given the complex, systemic and inflammatory nature of the condition, along with its comorbidities such as psychiatric and cardiovascular disorders. UCB recently convened a multidisciplinary group of experts around this topic. Read more in our American Journal of Managed Care article. 

I hope you will join ‘All of Us’ in raising awareness and encouraging action for people living with psoriatic conditions. Learn more about how you can get involved from the National Psoriasis Foundation.