AstraZeneca launches asthma awareness campaigns for physicians and patients

AstraZeneca is tackling the duality of asthma in two new awareness campaigns, one aimed at physicians and the other at patients.

The goal is to underscore the importance of both maintenance and rescue medicines, which address the two sides of asthma. The unbranded campaigns come about six months after the FDA approval of AstraZeneca and partner Avillion’s Airsupra inhaler, a combination of albuterol, a short-acting beta2-agonist (SABA), and budesonide, an inhaled corticosteroid (ICS).

The new work also coincides with a recent Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) management and prevention guidelines update that adds a recommendation for an as-needed combination ICS-SABA inhaler.

AstraZeneca didn’t know that the guideline update was coming while the marketing team was working on the new campaigns, but it offers independent support for AstraZeneca’s messages to healthcare providers and patients.

Nicole Skiljo

“While HCPs are aware of fluctuating inflammation in asthma, it’s crucial that we educate specialists and primary care physicians on the role of rising inflammation in the moment of an asthma attack,” said AstraZeneca’s executive director, US marketing Nicole Skiljo, pointing to the GINA guideline update. “For patients, we need to empower them to ask their doctor if their rescue inhaler can treat both sides of the asthma attack – the airway tightening and the airway inflammation at the same time.”

While both campaigns point up the need for co-treatment, they are visually and thematically different. The healthcare professional work called “Rescue Rescue” is named for the need to rescue the current traditional rescue therapy from its singular airway-tightening focus, while the patient campaign “2 Sides 2 Asthma” aims to educate patients on “both sides” of an asthma attack and includes AstraZeneca’s AirQ asthma control self-assessment tool that it also uses across its respiratory portfolio.

AstraZeneca debuted the unbranded professional campaign at the American Thoracic Society meeting in late May and began rolling out the patient campaign in June. Both include digital and social media, audio, video, connected TV, print and out-of-home advertising, Skiljo said. AstraZeneca expects to reach 150,000 HCPs and three million patients with the campaigns, she added.

AstraZeneca’s Airsupra, indicated for adults aged 18 and up, is not available in the US yet, but it is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2024.

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