“We’re changing lives”: Meet physician and Market Access leader Jorge Alvarez

Jorge Alvarez, M.D., went from working as a front-line healthcare professional to shaping healthcare systems at scale. Find out why the trained physician thinks of Market Access as “an unlimited opportunity for impact”—and how you can join him on our team as well.

From physician to population-level change-maker

To understand Jorge’s remarkable career journey, you may need to have a little bit of context first.

“My country, Mexico, is a developing country,” he began, “and so, as a physician, you’re always trying to do your very best—to see every single patient, for example, or to work for 24-hour stretches in clinics without taking a break. But in the end, at least from my perspective, I don’t think any of that was actually doing enough. Not for me at least. Back then, I remember sitting back and thinking, ‘My God, I didn’t manage to reach all of the people who I wanted to reach, and I failed to cure all of the people who needed to be cured.’”

It was a sobering realization, to be sure. Eventually, though, this thinking prompted Jorge to start exploring alternatives. He asked himself, How can I have the most direct impact on the largest number of patients and their families? And how can I ultimately impact the health of entire communities or populations at large?

“A light kind of came on for me when I decided to move to the pharmaceutical industry and work at Johnson & Johnson—I think I understood the amazing opportunities that come with a career in Market Access thanks to my clinical background,” he said. “From the moment I joined this company, I realized that Market Access was the perfect way for me to fulfill my overall purpose in life—a way to make a difference, roll out meaningful changes in the lives of patients and above all make an impact at scale.”

Not surprisingly, given the broadness of that vision, critical issues surrounding health equity and access to care are usually top of mind for Jorge these days.

“Across Latin America, there’s no denying that we still face a lot of challenges and complications from a public health perspective,” he said. “But because of my clinical background, I think I’m very attuned to what our needs really are, and the work that we’re doing on the Market Access team here is explicitly designed to help address that. Just look at the treatments that we’re bringing out, which could be game-changers for patients and their families. Sometimes I have to remind myself that we’re literally changing lives.”

Reflections on Market Access

Today, nearly a decade into his career in Market Access, what does Jorge have to say about his chosen field?

“It’s interesting because the measure of our achievement is not, say, internal results, but rather the impact we’re making on the lives of people everywhere. On our team, we have all these passionate people—joint-collaborators, if you will—who want to make a difference, so it’s a field with an unusual degree of integration, and I think that’s a big factor in our success.”

And for anyone interested in a career in Market Access, Jorge added this in closing: “You won’t find limits in terms of the opportunity for impact in Market Access. Will it be challenging at times? Yes. But this is about what the patient needs, and that will always be our first commitment.”