Month: May 2024

There’s a lot for brands lately, from concluding Earth Month campaigns to adapting to evolving regulations and engaging in crucial discussions on ESG and DEI communication.

In our May issue of Navigating Impact Comms Through the Cosmos – Taurus Edition, our team uses the energy of Taurus season to ponder the immense amount of happenings fueling progress in the sustainability and social impact space.

We cover:

Five stories of brand initiatives shared during Earth Month, from programming to research and more.The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) ruling and how it will affect companies.Advice on navigating ongoing debates of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) while still communicating impact.3BL data on communication trends based on the content brands published and where audience viewership skewed toward in Q1.And, how the Taurus season fits into these current trends. 

Read the latest from Navigating Impact Comms Through the Cosmos – Taurus Edition.

Cummins

Get to know Cummins HELM™. Our commitment to providing our customers with optionality they need to best suit their operational and sustainability goals. Get more information with Jane Beaman, Vice President Global, On-Highway Business, Cummins Inc.

About Cummins Inc.

Cummins Inc., a global power solutions leader, is comprised of five business segments – Components, Engine, Distribution, Power Systems and Accelera by Cummins – supported by our global manufacturing and extensive service and support network, skilled workforce and vast technological expertise. Cummins is committed to its Destination Zero strategy, which is grounded in the company’s commitment to sustainability and helping its customers successfully navigate the energy transition with its broad portfolio of products. The products range from advanced diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components including filtration, aftertreatment, turbochargers, fuel systems, valvetrain technologies, controls systems, air handling systems, automated transmissions, axles, drivelines, brakes, suspension systems, electric power generation systems, batteries, electrified power systems, hydrogen production technologies and fuel cell products. Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana (U.S.), since its founding in 1919, Cummins employs approximately 75,500 people committed to powering a more prosperous world through three global corporate responsibility priorities critical to healthy communities: education, environment and equality of opportunity. Cummins serves its customers online, through a network of company-owned and independent distributor locations, and through thousands of dealer locations worldwide and earned about $735 million on sales of $34.1 billion in 2023. See how Cummins is powering a world that’s always on by accessing news releases and more information at https://www.cummins.com/.

© 2024 Cummins Inc. All rights reserved.

Originally published by POPSUGAR

Take MAC Cosmetics, for example. When it first launched back in 1984, there was little education around recycling best practices and how plastic usage might impact the planet. Understanding this, in 1990, the company launched the industry’s first take-back program , where you could bring your finished tube of lipstick to any MAC store and they would recycle it for you. Similarly, looking to the future, brands will need to reimagine the wheel.

“That was 34 years ago, and it was revolutionary at the time, but it was merely taking what we can and making it better,” says Aida Moudachirou-Rebois, general manager for the brand. “Even today it’s hard to recycle cosmetics because each part is made of many different pieces and materials. But now when we design the product we make sure we have sustainability in mind. We use post-recycled material and all our secondary packaging is made of FSC carton boxes. We have designed our store to be sustainable with the energy that we use, and we’ve [prioritized] our direct-to-consumer business to reduce our carbon footprint. We are constantly looking for ways to improve.”

Continue reading here

Teaching first graders takes a lot of energy. So when Julia Garcia started feeling worn out, teaching became extremely difficult.

“I got very tired and couldn’t lift heavy things,” she remembers. “I had dizzy spells and could barely walk. I thought ‘my life is wreaking havoc on me.’”

Doctors struggled to pinpoint the problem, frustrating Julia and her husband Jose, both desperate for answers.

“Someone would diagnose one thing, then someone else would diagnose something else,” Jose said. “I felt helpless. We didn’t know which path to take.”

Julia’s case isn’t unusual. Because when it comes to detecting and treating heart disease, the healthcare system often tilts in favor of men.1

“Heart disease is regularly undetected, misdiagnosed and undertreated in women. Part of the reason is that historically, clinical heart research mainly studied men. So detection, treatment and standards of care often favor men over women,” said Dr. Roxana Mehran, MD, Director of Cardiovascular Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

In 2021, Dr. Mehran led an international commission studying gender inequities in heart health care. And in 2020, she became one of two principal investigators in the Medtronic SMART study.

“The SMART study finally gives us female-specific data that allows us to more effectively treat women with aortic stenosis (AS). It’s a critical step forward in treating women with heart disease,” said Dr. Mehran.

“Pivotal Moment”

The groundbreaking SMART clinical trial focused on women with AS, a potentially deadly heart condition. In patients with AS, the aortic heart valve thickens and narrows to the point that blood flow is severely restricted. Left untreated the condition can be fatal;2 treatment often requires replacement of the patient’s aortic heart valve.3 While the study looked at both men and women with small annulus (heart valves), women typically have smaller heart valves than men, so nearly 90% of the patients in the study were women.

“It’s a pivotal moment in women’s health,” said Nina Goodheart, senior vice president of the Structural Heart and Aortic Operating Unit at Medtronic. “For the first time, this trial gives physicians data from a head-to-head trial that tells them which transcatheter heart valve performs better, specifically in women with aortic stenosis. They’ve never had access to such female-specific data before.”

The trial studied 716 patients at 83 sites in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA), and the United States. It compared the performance of the Medtronic Evolut™ transcatheter aortic heart valve replacement (TAVR) system against the Edwards Sapien™ TAVR system, in patients with severe aortic stenosis and smaller heart valves. The groundbreaking findings, released on April 7, concluded that the Medtronic Evolut TAVR system performed better, particularly in terms of post-procedure hemodynamics (blood flow).

“We have to stop thinking that men and women are the same because they’re not,” added Goodheart. “A woman’s physiology is different, so she may also present different symptoms. We urgently need to start addressing this underrepresentation of women in clinical trials. That’s why the SMART study results are so important in the history of women’s health.”

In the case of Julia Garcia, who was not involved in the SMART study, cardiologists eventually determined that she too suffered from AS—her aortic valve was almost completely closed. Doctors recommended replacing her diseased valve with the Medtronic Evolut TAVR system. Cardiologist Dr. Jorge A. Alvarez of the Cardiology Clinic of San Antonio, TX, says they got to Julia in the nick of time. “Had her case gone undiagnosed much longer we may not be talking about the positive impact we had on her,” he said.

“I wasn’t afraid at all,” Garcia said. “I was more afraid of what I had been going through. I knew I was in good hands. I felt better almost immediately after the surgery. I have a new life.”

More needs to be done

Garcia’s experience demonstrates not only the promise of heart valve replacement treatment, but also how much farther the healthcare system has yet to go in detecting and treating heart disease equally in men and women.

Even though heart disease is the number one killer of both sexes, many people don’t know the symptoms of heart problems can be significantly different for women than men.4 Even doctors aren’t always aware of the differences, and the reasons lie in the data. Research has found that female patients are included in less than 40 percent of clinical studies.5

“The SMART trial is an exciting starting point, but we have a lot more work to do to close the gender gap in medicine,” Goodheart said. “This trial shows we can change the trajectory of medical care. Now we’re going to need everyone—physicians, hospitals, governments, medical societies, insurers and companies—to work together and focus on re-shaping the future of medical treatment for women.”

Learn more about Medtronic here.

Important Safety Information

TAVR risks may include, but are not limited to, death, stroke, damage to the arteries, bleeding, and the need for a permanent pacemaker.

See important safety information:  
 

1 The Heart Disease Gender Gap: https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-heart-disease-gender-gap 
2 Ross J Jr, Braunwald E. Aortic stenosis. Circulation. July 1968; 38(1 Suppl):61-67.) 
3 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aortic-stenosis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20353145 
4 https://give.brighamandwomens.org/7-differences-between-men-and-women/#:~:text=Men%20typically%20develop%20this%20plaque,to%20the%20accumulation%20of%20cholesterol. 
5 https://newsroom.heart.org/news/women-still-underrepresented-in-clinical-research-science-and-medicine-that-could-save-them-from-their-no-1-killer