Eli Lilly Takes the Top Spot as Oncology Advocates Reward Consistency
Archō’s 2025/2026 ELAVAY Oncology Advocacy Intelligence Report places Eli Lilly first in five of eight measured categories, positioning the company as the clearest favorite among cancer advocates, professional societies, and community-based organizations. Pfizer ranks first in two categories and lands in the top three across all eight, the only oncology company to do so. In a field crowded with competing manufacturers, those two results point to two different routes to trust: Lilly through consistency, Pfizer through breadth.
The report draws a sharp picture of how advocacy groups judge oncology companies in practice. Seventeen companies received mentions across the field: Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca/Alexion, Genentech/Roche, Daiichi Sankyo, Merck, Bayer, Eisai, Gilead/Kite, GlaxoSmithKline, Astellas, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Ferring, and Natera. Oncology remains the most crowded league table Archō tracks, and the compressed spread between ranks suggests that a company can move quickly from favored partner to also-ran if its outreach loses relevance or cadence.
One sentence captures the pressure inside this category:
Recognition is hard to earn and easy to lose.
Advocacy Groups Reward Partnership, Not Transactional Outreach
Advocates ranked companies they had worked with over the past 12 to 18 months and then rated their top three on a seven-point scale. Archō weighted recognition against rating to build the league tables, so the ranking reflects both familiarity and favorability. In other words, a company needed to be known and respected; visibility alone was not enough.
Lilly’s score reflects a style of engagement that advocacy leaders described as relational rather than transactional. One oncology advocacy leader wrote that the company treats patient and professional groups as true partners, not as grant recipients waiting for a deliverable. Another pointed to the patient panel at Lilly’s Patient Advocacy Breakfast during SABCS 2025, describing the session as approachable, patient-centered, and clear in language. Those details matter because oncology advocacy groups operate in an information-dense environment, where technical expertise can easily outrun patient comprehension. Companies that can translate complex science into language patients and caregivers can actually use gain credibility that goes beyond sponsorship dollars.
Pfizer’s strengths sit in a slightly different lane. Advocacy leaders described sustained presence, long-standing relationships, and steady participation in events tied to organizational missions. That pattern suggests a company earning trust through repetition and reliability rather than through a single standout program. In oncology, where patients and families often encounter fragmented care pathways, a sponsor that keeps showing up has a practical advantage: it becomes familiar before it becomes necessary.
Disease Education Dwarfs Federal Pricing Policy in Advocate Priorities
The report also shows where oncology advocates are directing their attention outside company rankings. Disease awareness and education sits first by a wide margin. Federal drug pricing policy does not. Not one respondent ranked the Inflation Reduction Act as their top priority, and just under half reported any active policy engagement inside their organization at all.
That distribution says less about apathy than triage. Many advocacy organizations are dealing first with patients who still need help naming their diagnosis, understanding treatment options, or navigating the basic structure of care. In that setting, a debate over federal pricing policy can feel distant from the bedside realities that dominate daily work. The report’s narrative is blunt on this point: companies that lead with pricing talking points are often answering a question nobody asked.
Sentiment toward the Inflation Reduction Act remains mixed rather than polarized. The largest group expects neither a positive nor a negative effect for patients, while the rest split between cautious optimism and concern about unintended consequences. Advocates connect the law less to list prices than to access mechanics, including 340B funding, payer behavior, and utilization management. The policy debate, in other words, is being filtered through the practical consequences of coverage and reimbursement rather than through abstract reform language.
Access Friction Still Defines the Patient Experience
Several access problems sit much closer to the treatment decision. A clear majority of respondents view non-medical medication switching as a serious threat to patients. Only half feel educated on copay accumulator and maximizer programs, and two-thirds of organizations sit outside FDA patient-focused programs designed to amplify patient voices. The report also examines 340B reform, excluded drug lists, prescription drug affordability boards, quality-adjusted life years, and CRO performance on trial access.
Those topics are not academic side notes. Non-medical switching can interrupt continuity for patients whose response depends on staying on a stable regimen, especially when oncology treatment plans are already layered with toxicity monitoring, supportive care, and frequent reassessment. Copay accumulators and maximizers can erode affordability without changing the sticker price patients see in public discussion, which makes them especially difficult for patients to recognize until pharmacy costs arrive. The result is a gap between policy language and lived experience, and advocates appear to be responding to the latter first.
A second sentence lands with force:
The cost conversation is happening far below the level of headline pricing.
Internal Advocacy Strength Can Lag External Reputation
Archō pairs the ELAVAY report with the Advocacy Influence Diagnostic, or AID, a companion tool that 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 is designed to show where internal influence falls behind external reputation. That framing matters because a company can score well with outside stakeholders and still fail to convert that standing into budget support, operational authority, or strategic input inside its own walls.
Toresco’s point is direct: a company can place in every category outside and still lose the budget argument inside. For oncology manufacturers, that gap can shape everything from staffing to program design to the durability of advocacy partnerships. External trust may open doors, but internal alignment determines whether those relationships are sustained or treated as peripheral activity.
The report does not offer a single universal lesson for oncology companies. It shows a field in which advocates reward consistency, scientific presence, and respectful communication, while policy debates remain secondary to education and access problems that affect patients immediately. The ranking itself is only part of the story; the sharper issue is how easily advocacy credibility can be gained in one setting and lost in another, especially when organizations mistake visibility for trust or policy language for patient relevance.