New emails reveal First Lady granted a pharmaceutical company high-level access to key state officials

Last month, at the request of Oregon’s first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson, the state’s top behavioral health official met with representatives from one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

The drug representatives work for Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson (2023 revenue: $85 billion), which makes long-acting injectable drugs to treat schizophrenia. It is a large, fiercely competitive market. Janssen has repeatedly gone to federal court to protect patents on its Invega Sustenna and Invega Trinza brand injectables, which generated sales of nearly $2.9 billion in 2023.

Ww previously reported that Kotek Wilson met with Janssen representatives on August 15, 2023. That information came from the first lady’s calendar, which the governor’s office published on April 26, along with thousands of emails. But those emails shed no light on the meeting. Now, however, emails have been released by the Oregon Health Authority on May 15 in response to public records requests from Ww and the Lund report provide context for that meeting – and subsequent communications from pharmaceutical company officials.

After the August 15 meeting, Leslie Fox, who works for Janssen’s Strategic Customer Group, contacted Kotek Wilson. (According to Fox’s LinkedIn profile, her role is “to influence sales, improve market position, and influence health policy among providers, patient and disease advocacy groups.”)

“Sophia (Yu, another Janssen official) and I would like to thank you for meeting us last Friday. We appreciate you sharing your passion for people with serious mental illness and how long-acting injectables are part of the solution,” Fox wrote. “You have expressed interest in having Sophia share this data with others within the state, including the Behavioral Health Advisor and the Behavioral Health Director, both of which will begin in early September,” Fox wrote. “Please let us know when these options are most appropriate.” (Fox and Yu did not respond to a request for comment.)

Fox alluded to Kotek’s newly hired behavioral health consultant Juliana Wallace and Oregon Health Authority behavioral health director Ebony Clarke, who moved to the state agency from Multnomah County last year.

On September 5, Kotek Wilson forwarded Fox’s email to Clarke, Wallace and Kotek’s health care advisor, Kristina Narayan. “I wanted to share this email with you between your three positions, you should have access to this information. It was very interesting. We can talk about it more.”

The conversation then became silent.

Records show that Johnson & Johnson, Janssen’s parent company, made a $5,000 contribution to Kotek’s political action committee on Nov. 6. That amount is twice Johnson & Johnson’s largest contribution to an Oregon politician: $2,500 to Governor Kate Brown in 2017.

(Kotek campaign spokesman Thomas Wheatley says the contribution was routine. “The Johnson & Johnson contribution was part of a fundraising event in the fall of 2023,” says Wheatley. “Between September 2023 and December 2023, the political committee the Governor’s six separate events that together raised approximately $295,000. In total, the Governor’s Political Committee raised a total of just over $470,000 during the same period.”

On February 5, Fox emailed Kotek Wilson again. “I just wanted to stop by and follow up on our conversation last summer,” she wrote. “I know we were waiting for the new behavioral health director and team at OHA to start their roles in early fall. I look forward to further discussion.”

Kotek Wilson forwarded the message to Clarke and Wallace, this time with a notable change: she copied her wife, the governor, into the email.

“Leslie Fox is a contact of Robin Henderson who I spoke to in August 2023. She has some interesting data to share. She contacted me today,” Kotek Wilson wrote. “Perhaps we can arrange a zoom call for an introduction and a brief overview, after which you can decide what you would like to explore further.”

In addition to Kotek Wilson adding her wife to the email chain, the source of the original contact – Robin Henderson – is interesting. If Ww Previously reported, Henderson, the CEO of Behavioral Health at Providence Health & Services Oregon, regularly appears on Kotek Wilson’s agenda. Kotek Wilson told it Ww rather that Henderson helped her prepare for speaking engagements, but it is also the case that Providence has significant policy and financial issues with the state and that access to the governor’s office can be an asset for a company like Providence.

Wallace and Clarke responded immediately and enthusiastically to Kotek Wilson’s email, both copying the governor into the email. “Thank you for reaching out. I am very curious about this dataset. A Zoom call sounds like a good first step,” Clarke wrote.

A Salem pharmaceutical lobbyist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the exchange was unusual.

The lobbyist says it’s unusual for pharmaceutical company officials to meet with someone close to the governor, as well as OHA’s director of behavioral health. “That just doesn’t happen,” says the lobbyist. The reason: Oregon long ago established a rigorous process for the state to select the drugs paid for by the Oregon Health Plan. Drug manufacturers are eager to do business with the state because the more than one million Oregonians covered by the Oregon Health Plan consume a lot of medications. In general, the state prefers generic drugs because they are cheaper. Johnson & Johnson has repeatedly gone to court to protect the patents on its injectable schizophrenic drugs, perpetuating higher prices.

According to the emails, Clarke met with Fox on April 3 (the first lady bowed out at the last minute). After the meeting, Fox sent an email to Clarke, copying the first lady.

After thanking her for the meeting, Fox referred to studies showing the benefit of giving patients long-term injectables, i.e. the product her company sells, earlier in treatment. “I also add the work that the Mental Health Clinical Advisory Group has done to support clients with schizophrenia,” Fox wrote. “This is work where they aim to bring LAIs (long-term injectables) to earlier use for people diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

At a May 1 news conference, Kotek held to discuss the departure of three of the top four advisers in her office — they left, records show, because they believed the first lady’s involvement in policy and personnel issues was an untenable situation – Kotek downplayed her wife’s interests. role. “You can tell from her calendar that she hasn’t had a staff meeting since freshman year.”

Related: Aimee Kotek Wilson is her wife’s closest advisor and top priority

But the OHA emails released yesterday show that in addition to her communications about the pharmaceutical representatives, Kotek Wilson was included in a working group organized by the National Alliance of Mental Illness Oregon to try to restructure Oregon’s policy on civil involvement. Emails show the first lady was part of a group of policy experts that met six times starting in January.

Kotek responded to questions about the first ladies’ interactions with drug company representatives with a statement and the NAMI meeting with a statement.

“In preparation for the September 2023 roundtable focused on the intersection of serious mental illness (SMI) and homelessness, the governor’s office connected with (Johnson & Johnson) to better understand the consumer data they might be able to share to understand the size of Oregon’s SMI population.”

“J&J, like other pharmaceutical companies, is uniquely able to provide consumer data on the use of certain medications, such as long-acting injectables, among the SMI population at large. No specific J&J product was discussed, but rather the potential sharing of data regarding this vulnerable population. In the months that followed, J&J followed up with an email and First Lady appropriately turned the discussion over to the Oregon Health Authority.

An OHA spokesman, Timothy Heider, says the meeting was simply an opportunity to share information. “Oregon continues to face an acute healthcare shortage that will take several years to close. State health officials want to explore every opportunity to improve treatment access and treatment outcomes,” Heider said. Ebony Clarke, director of behavioral health for OHA, and members of her staff met with representatives from Johnson & Johnson to learn more about their diagnostic device and injectable treatment medications. No follow-up meetings are planned.”

Kotek added that the first lady’s participation in the civic engagement working group ended long ago.

“Since the beginning of the year, the First Lady has not been involved in or attended any of the NAMI Civil Commitment Working Group virtual meetings,” Kotek said. “She was copied in some emails but did not participate in conversations.”