Eli Lilly has committed to setting a new standard for on-screen representation of common chronic diseases, and it walked the walk with its recent sponsorship of a segment on “Project Runway.”
In the challenge, which appeared in an episode of the fashion competition show that aired last month, designers were tasked with creating outfits that would be both stylish and comfortable for people with atopic dermatitis, or eczema.
“Over the past few decades, the fashion world has made strides in making everyone feel welcome and fashionable,” show host Heidi Klum said while introducing the challenge. “The muses standing here deal with something millions of people experience on a regular basis: painful skin conditions like moderate to severe eczema. And that may make it difficult to find fashionable clothes that work for them.”
As Ashley Diaz-Granados, senior vice president of U.S. immunology at Lilly, noted, certain fabrics can trigger eczema symptom flare-ups.
“Eczema starts from inflammation within, but it can cause outward physical discomfort and create unpredictability, even influencing something as personal as fashion choices,” Diaz-Granados said in an email interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
With the fashion-forward sponsorship, she added, “We hope to shed light on the challenges of living with eczema, and help people with eczema feel seen, heard and empowered to speak to their healthcare provider about how eczema is impacting them.”
The “Project Runway” team-up ties in with Lilly’s broader goal of upping the pop cultural profile of several common chronic diseases. Diaz-Granados pointed to the results of a recent study sponsored by the Big Pharma that analyzed the most popular movies and TV shows of 2023 to examine their portrayals of obesity, cancer, dementia, diabetes and eczema.
“Eczema and other inflammatory skin conditions are rarely shown in pop culture,” she said, citing one of the study’s findings: “While 7% of adults in the U.S. live with atopic dermatitis, there were no specific references to the condition in popular film and television at all.”
Lilly, therefore, is “committed to promoting the accurate representation of health conditions in entertainment media to better reflect the lived experience of patients,” she said.
Aside from the reality show sponsorship, since putting out the survey results earlier this year, Lilly has also helped create a resource toolkit and incubator program, both aimed at helping filmmakers improve onscreen depictions of disease.
The toolkit (PDF) provides guidance for every step of the decision to “tell a health-focused story.” The incubator program, meanwhile, launched last month in collaboration with Tribeca Studios and, in its first year, will provide financial and mentorship support for three short film projects featuring accurate, nuanced representations of chronic diseases.