Anna McClafferty Joins Health Union Executive Leadership as Senior Vice President, Insights

PHILADELPHIA, PA--(Marketwired - February 02, 2017) - Taking on the newly created role of Senior Vice President, Insights, Anna McClafferty has joined Health Union's leadership team, where she will be responsible for driving the growth of the company's Insights business.

Through its highly engaged online health communities, Health Union provides valuable insights to its partners, including biopharmaceuticals and other healthcare companies, about patients' experiences and unmet needs across a number of chronic health conditions. In her role as Senior Vice President, Insights, McClafferty will ensure Health Union partners have access to unique consumer research, analytics, and vital patient feedback which will enhance their ability to align business strategies to patients' needs.

"We are thrilled to have an experienced leader like Anna take over the reins of our growing Insights practice, where she will partner with our clients who are seeking to integrate the voice of patients into their business decision-making processes," said Health Union President and Co-founder Tim Armand. "She will work with these companies, helping them to understand patients' perspectives and real-life experiences, which can be challenging, especially in certain conditions. Oftentimes, just finding these patients can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. By tapping into the patient relationships we build through our online health communities, Health Union can offer a haystack of needles."

Prior to joining Health Union, McClafferty was Senior Vice President & Management Advisor at TGaS Advisors, a provider of fact-based, peer-to-peer comparative intelligence, to pharmaceutical operations leaders. While at TGaS, she held a variety of positions, including leading content development and client consulting for executive commercial operations leaders and departments and overseeing practices areas such as insights and analytics, training and development, global marketing, and TGaS Advisors' new product development and marketing.

McClafferty's experience also includes serving as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where her duties included oversight of shared service and centers of excellence functions and support for U.S. business units and the managed markets division. In earlier roles at GSK predecessor, SmithKline Beecham, she led merger integration, commercial modeling transformation, and alternative sourcing initiatives. Her background also includes serving as Research Group manager for the information industry practice of National Analysts (now Naxion), a strategic marketing research firm.

She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in French and an MBA from the Pennsylvania State University.

"Health Union's unique model for community development is dedicated to creating a safe, supportive environment for patients to learn, connect, and share. For our partners, these communities offer access to highly engaged consumers who can provide immediate and invaluable information about their health and healthcare," McClafferty said. "These patients want to have their voices heard on a range of issues -- from what lifestyle changes they've had to make following their diagnosis to how seemingly invisible symptoms impact their everyday lives."

"Already, Health Union is providing extremely valuable research data and custom analyses to its partners about patients' needs in migraine, multiple sclerosis, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and other conditions," McClafferty added. "We have an exciting opportunity to expand the reach and impact Health Union Insights can have for healthcare companies' ability to align their strategies to patients' needs. It's a win-win."

About Health Union, LLC

Health Union inspires people to live better with challenging health conditions - combining new, original content every day with digital, social and mobile technologies to cultivate active online health communities. Health Union platforms are unique ecosystems dedicated to illuminating the voices and experiences of people with migraine, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis C, and more. Its services and offerings foster open and honest interactions about these health conditions between and among patients, caregivers, professionals, providers and industry partners to help all stakeholders make more informed decisions about healthcare.

Health Union's current portfolio of online health communities includes Migraine.com, MultipleSclerosis.net, RheumatoidArthritis.net, Type2Diabetes.com, HepatitisC.net, COPD.net, CrohnsDisease.com, Asthma.net, IrritableBowelSyndrome.net, PlaquePsoriasis.com, Psoriatic-Arthritis.com, and LungCancer.net. Health Union also owns URLs and plans future patient communities for ParkinsonsDisease.net, SkinCancer.net, AtopicDermatitis.net, BladderCancer.net, ProstateCancer.net, AlzheimersDisease.net, and more to come.

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