The definition of health equity, it means that everybody attains their full health and wellbeing, irrespective of factors such as gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and so on. And in particular, wealth. Nearly half of the world's population lacks access to essential healthcare. And, and if you make it broader, then of course there's also access to clean water.
And then in the US, you know, millions of people are still uninsured or underinsured. And in, in equitable access to medication or, or general healthcare creates a lot of problems, you know, further down the line in terms of ability to participate in the workforce. Obviously, you know, the quality of life, longevity, other, you know, potential social tensions. So it's a, it's a very pertinent and, and impactful topic and problem.
And I think recent events are only just exacerbating the issues in with inequality. Pharma plays a central role in terms of improving access to medication because obviously they are in the business of developing manufacturing medication, but they also have a very strong network with various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. So there is a, is an increasing demand on pharma to play their role in this space. And you can see the, this also linked to the demand on ESG performance or footprint, which is not just environmentally focused as a big social component of ESG.
And social is defined along those parameters of health equity, including access to medication. And pharma companies, especially the ones that are publicly listed and are under investor scrutiny, are being asked to demonstrate their progress in this space. There are many strategies that pharma can employ to improve health equity. So one is when you look at the r and d that they make sure that they, they recruit patients from ethnic minorities, for example, or even women into the, into the trials to make sure that there's a broad representation of the patient population that might be addressable by the treatment, and that they're able to demonstrate the benefit across these subpopulations.
The other is obviously the access to medication. And this could be in developing nations, of course, that they provide subsidized or cheaper access to medication and maybe even waive some of their intellectual property rights to do that, as you have seen in the, in the pandemic or as a response to the pandemic. And then there is patient access programs in developed countries. You see this often in the US that the drug price is quite high, but pharma companies are providing support to, to patients who require that.
And then there's of course the sort of broader community engagement and education piece. So making patients aware of the, of the treatment options that are available, the, the treatment pathways and where they can get, you know, diagnosis and, and treatment access. And that is a sort of, you know, background effort to create awareness of, of innovation. There's a fundamental challenge in that health equity is a very broad topic with different definitions and expectations, and I think it's quite hard for companies to decide where they should focus.
What we have done is put together a framework to assess company's maturity against different health equity expectations. Overall, our health equity framework and approach helps to ensure that farmers' investments in this space are sustainable, are based on evidence and are outcomes driven, and create long-term value for the pharma company, as well as advance access to care.
