Archo’s ELAVAY Releases the 2025/2026 Advocacy Intelligence Report, Naming the Companies Patients Trust Most

Archo Advocacy today released the 2025/2026 ELAVAY Advocacy Intelligence report, the industry’s annual read on which pharmaceutical and biotech companies patient advocates, professional societies, and community-based organizations trust to act in the patient interest. The report ranks company performance across eight leadership categories and draws directly on quantitative ratings and open-text rationale from advocacy and community-based organization leaders, with section response bases reaching 172 respondents.

This year’s dataset measures a competitive field of eleven companies that earned league-table positions: Novartis, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech/Roche, Sanofi, Neurocrine Biosciences, Merck, AbbVie, and AstraZeneca/Alexion. Together, they define the front of a field that Archo tracks across the full patient-advocacy ecosystem.

“Advocates do not hand out trust for press releases. They hand it out for what companies build alongside them. The 2025/2026 ELAVAY report names the companies that earned that trust this year, and it shows the rest of the field exactly where the gap sits,” said Matt Toresco, Founder and CEO of Archo Advocacy.

THE EIGHT LEADERSHIP CATEGORIES AND WHO LEADS THEM

Advocates ranked their top five companies in each category and rated their top three on a seven-point scale, where four marks the industry average. Archo then weighted recognition against rating to produce each league table. The leaders follow.

1. Partnerships & Programs Support: Novartis takes the room at number one, with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine a close second and Pfizer third. Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech/Roche, Sanofi, Neurocrine Biosciences, Merck, and AbbVie complete the measured field. Novartis wins because advocates can describe what they built together, not just what they received.
2. Federal & State Policy Engagement: Pfizer leads on policy presence, Novartis ranks second, and Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine ranks third. Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Neurocrine Biosciences, Merck, AbbVie, and AstraZeneca/Alexion all place. Advocates reward the companies they see showing up in the rooms that shape patient access.
3. Corporate Image & Reputation: Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine holds the reputation lead, Novartis ranks second, and Eli Lilly ranks third on the strength of its commitment-to-patients scores. Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi, and Genentech/Roche post strong showings. Reputation moves slowest in this dataset and costs the most to lose.
4. Expanding Access & Education: Novartis and Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine share the lead, with Eli Lilly and Pfizer close behind. Advocates increasingly credit specific programs, from insulin affordability to oncology access, rather than the parent brand. Brand affinity no longer carries the access narrative on its own.
5. Patient Advocacy & CBO Relations: Pfizer earns the top spot on relationship depth, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine ranks second, and Sanofi ranks third on consistent year-over-year improvement. Advocates reward cadence, candor, and follow-through. The winners return the call during week one.
6. Reach, Include, Support & Educate (RISE): This historical DE&I metric was renamed to ensure the work would live on and the industry would continue to engage disparate populations. Genentech, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, and Pfizer share the lead on inclusion. Advocates recognize inclusive trial design, language access, and equity-anchored access programs. Statements without operating evidence lose points this year.
7. Health Equity Leadership Perception: Advocates most often name Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine when they think of equity leadership, with Novartis second and Eli Lilly and Pfizer tied for third. J&J Innovative Medicine wins on a dense, specific qualitative bench, including multiple myeloma programs reaching Black families and equity-anchored mental health funding.
8. Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Performance: Novartis leads across the broadest set of SDOH-adjacent areas, with Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine second and Pfizer third. Pfizer earns the highest average rating in the category. SDOH is where the work either exists or it does not, and advocates can tell the difference.

“Watch the margins, not the medals. Reputation gaps narrowed this year, access stopped being a brand story, and advocates marked companies down whenever they could not describe the program behind the promise. Words without programs cost points,” Toresco added.

BEYOND THE RANKINGS: WHAT THE DATA REVEALS ABOUT ACCESS

The full report runs twelve sections and pairs the league tables with the access pressures advocates see on the ground. Four findings stand out this year.

• Provider bias: Advocates estimate that the majority of the patients they represent encountered clinician innate bias in the past year, upstream of every access metric that follows.
• Non-medical switching: 61.9% of advocates report negative patient impact due to non-medical medication-switching policies.
• Policy capacity: 49.6% of advocacy and community-based organizations now maintain dedicated policy staff, a partial recovery from the 2020 to 2021 floor of 21%, but still well below the 2016 peak of 76%.
• IRA sentiment: 43.0% of advocates expect the Inflation Reduction Act to benefit their patients, 34.4% expect a neutral or unclear impact, and 22.7% expect harm.

FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION: THE ADVOCACY INFLUENCE DIAGNOSTIC

ELAVAY measures how the outside world sees a company. Its companion tool, the Advocacy Influence Diagnostic (AID), measures how a company’s own organization sees and uses its advocacy function. AID sorts advocacy leaders into four personas, the Architect, the Defender, the Underdog, and the Whisperer, and surfaces where internal influence lags external rank.

“A company can win the room on ELAVAY and still lose it inside its own walls. That mismatch is the most common failure mode in the dataset and the most expensive one to ignore. AID tells advocacy leaders where their internal stance trails their external reputation, and where to fix it,” said Toresco.

The full 2025/2026 ELAVAY report spans twelve sections and covers both quantitative league tables and qualitative advocate testimony across the therapeutic areas Archo tracks. For the full report or a private briefing on where a company sits inside the dataset, visit https://archo.io or contact Matt Toresco at [email protected].