How UCB can help ‘Women Deliver’

At UCB, we focus on severe diseases that have significant unmet needs. By putting patients at the heart of everything we do, we aim to enable people to live their best lives, delivering impactful solutions to patients.

We recognize that women have significant and unmet needs when it comes to managing severe, chronic conditions. That’s why we engage in dialogues with patients suffering from these diseases to understand where we may be able to provide them unique value.

As part of this ongoing conversation, we will join more than 6,000 world leaders, influencers, advocates, academics, activists and journalists in Vancouver for the Women Deliver 2019 conference (3-6 June 2019). The event will be the world’s largest on gender equality and health, rights, and wellbeing of girls and women.

Our values are closely aligned with Women Deliver in its drive to accelerate progress for girls and women everywhere. We are committed to sustainability, diversity and inclusion. This can be seen in UCB’s CSR programmes in Africa and China, as well as in our advocacy for women in leadership.

It is also reflected in our science. For example, our researchers conduct, where appropriate, additional studies to give women more information about the use of our medicines before, during and after pregnancy, and we actively promote bone health for women with our innovative science solutions behind us.

To share our work in these areas with Women Deliver attendees, UCB will host two side events during the conference. This first is a panel session (3 June, 9:00) focused on the issues faced by women of childbearing age.

For women of childbearing age living with an autoimmune disease, managing their disease in pregnancy can create worry. UCB strongly believes that no woman should have to choose between her health and having a child. The side event aims to inspire attendees to spread this message globally, catalyse policy change, and empower women to have important conversations with their healthcare professionals to ensure they receive the support they need.

It will feature contributions from a range of panelists including representatives of advocacy organisations March of Dimes, the What to Expect Project, and Women Deliver, as well as medical experts and youth champions of reproductive health.

The second side event is entitled the Bone Gym: Movement for Change. Building on the Women Deliver Conference theme of ‘power’, we will focus on the power in women’s bones. For women with fragile bones, power may feel like an impossible dream. A fragility fracture occurs every 3 seconds globally, but we are not powerless against these fractures. The Bone Gym is a uniquely interactive session that will show delegates how to build their strength and become a force for change for the women around them.

To attend our seminar, you don’t have to be wearing any special clothes, there’s no joining fee, and it doesn’t require any experience or fitness level – the bone gym is for everybody. All you need is enthusiasm. Whether you drop by for 15 or 45 minutes, you will get a lot out of this unique experience.

Our team of Bone Gym personal trainers features Elizabeth Thompson, CEO of National Osteoporosis Foundation (USA) and author Barbara Hannah Grufferman, who will demonstrate why we believe that bone health matters – and how you can help us in our mission to create better care for women with fragility fractures.