Patients who hide pills and advocacy offices that could get ‘raided’ — a Gilead leader on navigating global HIV

In some places, championing awareness for heavily stigmatized diseases like HIV can still be a radical act. Janet Dorling, senior vice president of the intercontinental region and global patient solutions for Gilead Sciences, is well aware of this reality.

As the executive who leads Gilead’s business units responsible for more than 150 countries, including many middle- and low-income countries, she’s heard firsthand the kinds of challenges those living with and advocating for these diseases face every day. In her first 90 days on the job, Dorling traveled to nine of those countries, meeting with local Gilead teams and local stakeholders.

“I personally have a practice [that] if I go to a local market, I don’t ever want to leave before I’ve talked to a healthcare provider or a community member,” she said.

In one market, for instance, Dorling sat down with a group of what she called “professional activists” who’ve dedicated their lives to HIV advocacy, despite the dangers of that work in their country.

“As we were talking about what we can do to partner and help, it was impressed upon me that their lives were in danger every day trying to do what they needed to do for the people that they wanted to help in their community,” Dorling said. “They have to be worried about someone coming and raiding their small office.”

Although she already knew about such dangers “on an intellectual level,” hearing someone say it from across the table was different. Dorling said the experience changed her perspective; gave her more empathy, understanding and compassion; and made her think about ways she and her team can provide support.

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“It is a big job and there’s so much to do. It’s all around creating partnerships with purpose.”

Janet Dorling

SVP, intercontinental region, global patient solutions, Gilead Sciences

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“That was a really meaningful moment in those first 90 days, and I carry that with me as I think about doing my job every day,” she said.

Gilead’s been a leader in the infectious disease space for more than 30 years with heavy investments in HIV and antivirals in particular. Its HIV drugs include the first single tablet regimen for treating the disease and the first once-daily oral medication for pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent the virus’s transmission. 

In the last few years, Gilead has also worked to expand its reach in oncology. It added the first-in-class breast cancer treatment, Trodelvy, to its portfolio with the 2020 acquisition of Immunomedics and received an additional key approval earlier this year when the FDA expanded Trodelvy’s use. Its pipeline includes candidates for breast cancer, cell therapy and solid tumors. 

A molecular biologist by training, Dorling has been with Gilead for nearly four years, and was SVP of global commercial strategy and operations before stepping into her new role in July. Prior to working at Gilead, she held commercial and marketing roles at companies like Genentech, Roche and CymaBay.

Dorling’s new position is two-pronged. Leading the intercontinental region is a more traditional commercial role, working with upper- and middle-income markets in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Global patient solutions are all about sustainable access, focused on reinvesting in local communities and expanding patient access in mostly low- and middle-income markets. Combined, these two organizations cover more than 30 million patients living with HIV, more than 30 million living with hepatitis C and more than 200 million living with hepatitis B, she said.

“It is a big job and there’s so much to do,” she said. “It’s all around creating partnerships with purpose.”

PharmaVoice spoke with Dorling about her first 90 days in the role and her plans moving forward. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and style.

PHARMAVOICE: You have said you want to spearhead a new era of health equity. What does that mean to you and how are you doing that?

JANET DORLING: One of the things I like most about this role, and that I’m really excited about, is that we get to partner with different organizations working on the front lines. Achieving progress toward global health equity is not something we can do alone. We are doing this by not just being focused on medicines or pharmaceuticals, which is clearly where we have a lot of strengths, but I think we have in these partnership the ability to address the underlying health inequities, whether it’s barriers to care, cultural issues [or] issues in how healthcare is administered.

For example, our team in Taiwan, which has been advocating for better HBV [hepatitis B virus] care since 2019, were able to expand the criteria of reimbursement for chronic hepatitis B treatment to enable broader access to patients at high risk and provide medication earlier in the disease progression. This is where we’re working with patient advocates, researchers [and] key stakeholders in the government. In doing so, we went from having a somewhat limited set of patients that we could treat for HBV, and now we have broadened that. This is going to really help us make progress toward our goal of elimination of HBV in that country. It’s not Gilead doing this alone. There’s no way. It’s really about how we partner across a lot of different functions with a lot of different stakeholders to make that change.

You’re a few months into your new role. What’s next on the agenda?