Drug donations and philanthropic efforts

We understand that only by removing barriers to care and by supporting patients over the course of their disease can our innovative medical treatments achieve their maximum impact. We have a special focus on HIV, hepatitis and cancer care in in parts of the developing world.

Drug donations and philanthropic efforts

We understand that only by removing barriers to care and by supporting patients over the course of their disease can our innovative medical treatments achieve their maximum impact. We have a special focus on HIV, hepatitis and cancer care in parts of the developing world.

The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation's mission is to promote health equity and improve the health outcomes of populations disproportionately affected by serious diseases and conditions by strengthening community-based healthcare worker capacity, integrating medical care and community-based supportive services and mobilizing communities in fighting disease. Leveraging public-private partnerships, the Foundation focuses on improving health outcomes of populations disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, type 2 diabetes and cancer. The Foundation also supports the mental health and community reintegration needs of veterans, military service members, their families and families of the fallen in the United States.


Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Learn where and how we are helping

Product donations in Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa

In 2013, the company donated products with a wholesale value of over $66 million. More than $17 million in product donations went to the Asia/Pacific region, more than $22 million to Latin America and the Caribbean and nearly $9 million went to countries in the Middle East and Africa. Donations were distributed through AmeriCares, Direct Relief International, Project HOPE, the National Cancer Coalition, Medical Teams International, MAP International and the Catholic Medical Mission Board. Among the products donated were cardiovascular products, antibiotics and therapeutic creams.

HIV/AIDS, TB, Cervical & Breast Cancer Screenings in Africa

Since 1999, Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s SECURE THE FUTURE initiative has built a lasting legacy that includes the creation of Children’s Clinical Centers of Excellence in five countries and the training of hundreds of healthcare providers across the continent. In 2007, the SECURE THE FUTURE Technical Assistance and Skills Transfer Program (TAP) evolved from the Foundation’s groundbreaking initiative to enhance medical research and care and community-based outreach and support for women and children affected and infected by HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2011, the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy presented a President’s Award, its highest honor, to TAP during its 11th annual Excellence Awards program.

Capacity-building in Africa:

The Foundation is a founding member of the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon women’s health initiative that seeks to leverage existing HIV infrastructure and platforms in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America to help combat cervical and breast cancers.

  • About 2,500 healthcare professionals have been trained on Good Clinical Practices (GCP) at hospitals and medical schools in sub-Saharan Africa with support from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.
  • The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s Legacy NGO Training Institute has trained more than 1,700 NGO leaders and managers in five countries about effective and efficient institutional and program management.
  • The Swaziland Breast and Cervical Cancer Network, which supports rural initiatives on HIV and cancer, established the first community-level cervical cancer screening clinic in May 2013.
  • People Living with Disabilities and HIV in Zimbabwe and South Africa facilitates empowerment programs to help people with disabilities advocate for their needs and gain access to information and resources. The organization’s work has informed policy to increase access to health and social services and HIV care for people with disabilities.
  • In South Africa, Ladysmith Regional Hospital’s HIV and Mental Health Program provides a coordinated and comprehensive care model that integrates healthcare services for mental health disorders, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. The health district has adopted the hospital’s HIV testing guidelines as a best practice model.

Dedicated Children’s AIDS Clinics

Bristol Myers Squibb – partnering with the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and Texas Children’s Hospital – created five Children’s Clinical Centers of Excellence in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda. In addition, the Foundation funded a $2-million satellite network of clinics in Lesotho. Today, about 97,000 patients are under care in these clinics and their satellite sites and more than 200,000 at the countrie's outreach sites – 85 percent of them children.

Teen Center in Botswana

In the 10 years since the Botswana-Baylor-Bristol Myers Squibb Children’s Clinical Center of Excellence opened in Botswana, the average age of a child infected with HIV/AIDS in Botswana has risen from 5 years to 14 years as the increased availability of care and support have transformed HIV/AIDS into a manageable chronic disease. Now that more than half of the 4,000 children receiving treatment at the Botswana center are teenagers, these children have new needs. In 2013, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s SECURE THE FUTURE program and Bristol Myers Squibb employees donated money to help establish the Botswana-Baylor-Bristol Myers Squibb Adolescent Center of Excellence. The center provides care appropriate for teenagers, helping them manage medical, behavioral and psychosocial issues along with their illness and also teaching them how to manage their medication on their own.

Pediatric AIDS Corps

From 2006-2011, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine, collaborated on a $22-million program to establish the Pediatric AIDS Corps, where young pediatricians from the U.S. signed on for one- to two-year stints to work in the Bristol Myers Squibb-Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Clinical Centers of Excellence in Africa. At its peak, some 59 physicians were serving in these clinics at any one time.

The Pediatric AIDS Corps also worked in a network of associated rural clinics, treating HIV-infected children and their families, and training other healthcare professionals. Each month, about 2,000 local healthcare providers received training in this network of clinics, while another 125 received more intensive clinical mentoring. In July 2011, the Pediatric AIDS Corps became the Texas Children’s Global Health Service Corps, broadening its mission to include other diseases afflicting sub-Saharan Africa beyond HIV.

Collaborating with the World Health Organization’s Global TB Program to address tuberculosis in Africa

Another important innovation by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation focuses on the neglected problem of tuberculosis (TB) co-infections for HIV/AIDS patients. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80 percent of the world’s HIV/TB burden is in Africa, where South Africa is ranked second to Swaziland among areas most affected. Since 2011, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation has supported WHO’s ENGAGE-TB initiative with more than $4.7 million in funding to strengthen the involvement of non-governmental organizations in community-based TB and TB/HIV care in South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Bystrol-Myers Squibb Foundation also has developed a TAP faculty offering based on successful SECURE THE FUTURE projects in South Africa. This approach integrates community outreach for adherence to TB and HIV treatment and management protocols with community-based approaches for education, case identification, rapid diagnosis and follow-up treatment. Since 2011, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s partners in South Africa, Ethiopia, and Tanzania have screened nearly 32,000 people and referred 1,854 to care for TB.

Hepatitis B/C in Asia

Since 2002, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation’s Delivering Hope program has supported more than 40 projects in China and India that have focused on the millions affected by hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) in the two countries.

These efforts have focused on empowering patients, families and communities; identifying and training community-based health “sentries” – lay, auxiliary and non-specialist health workers; seeking innovative channels for promoting disease awareness and education; and raising the profile of viral hepatitis as a public health issue. To date, Delivering Hope projects have trained more than 371,279 health workers, vaccinated more than 753,141 people against HBV and informed health policy in China and in India.

In India:

  • Delivering Hope has supported the training of nearly 85,000 health workers.
  • More than 153,000 patients have received HBV vaccinations
  • 8,136 patients have been screened for viral hepatitis

In China:

  • Delivering Hope has supported the training of more than 133,000 health workers on HCV and nearly 4,000 more on HBV
  • About 128,000 women have been screened for HBV
  • Nearly 6,200 screenings were done for family members of HBV and HCV patients
  • Nearly 3,500 people received HBV vaccinations.

The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation established three new Centers of Excellence – to work with its grantees and other partners to use evidence-based practices from prior Foundation projects to help scale up and replicate additional community-based interventions and inform public policy in liver diseases.

One center is based at the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control (CFHPC) and the other two are in India, one at the Liver Foundation of West Bengal and a second at the HOPE Initiative in Uttar Pradesh.

In July 2013, Delivering Hope received a Best CSR Practices award in the “Concern for Health” category from CMO Asia. In November 2012, to mark its 10th anniversary, Delivering Hope convened a Centers of Excellence Conference to share insights from Asian-Pacific community groups about the best approaches for managing viral hepatitis.

Cancer care in Central & Eastern Europe

Another area of focus for the Foundation is the public health response to cancer in Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in connection with rising rates of breast and lung cancers, lack of hospice and family supportive care and stigma around cancer.

Cancer is the second-most common cause of death in Europe and remains a significant public health problem. The incidence-to mortality ratios in Central and Eastern Europe tend to be less favorable than those in Northern and Western Europe. Low levels of cancer awareness and understanding among the general population, a lack of cancer prevention and screening efforts and limited healthcare resources in the region are factors contributing to this gap.

To address these disparities, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation has been creating innovative partnerships focused on training oncology, general practice and public health nurses to increase their ability to care for cancer patients in the community, targeting funding at the community level and seeking to improve patient health outcomes and their quality of life through its Bridging Cancer Care program. Bridging Cancer Care focuses on populations disproportionately affected by cancer, including the poor, ethnic minorities and people living in rural communities with limited access to cancer services.

Between 2010 and 2013 the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation awarded 22 Bridging Cancer Care grants for projects in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania:

  • In 2013, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation awarded two, two-year grants totaling $700,000 to establish Cancer Nursing Centers of Excellence in oncology nursing and smoking cessation in Saratov Oblast, Russia, and Prague, Czech Republic. The centers will offer training and technical assistance to nurses and will disseminate lessons and impactful approaches to broader audiences throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
  • In 2012, the Foundation awarded five grants totaling close to $750,000 to improve nursing skills for oncology, general practice and public health nurses in the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Russia.
  • In 2011, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation awarded six grants totaling more than $900,000 to improve cancer awareness, prevention and care by developing cancer nursing skills and building nurse-community partnerships in Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia.
  • In 2010, the Foundation supported the implementation of the End of Life Nursing Education Consortium to improve palliative care in several countries, including Russia and Romania. Also in Romania, a two-year, $95,000 grant supported a project to increase health literacy and improve the quality of life for cancer patients by educating community nurses and forming partnerships between nurses, patients and libraries. A $149,000 grant to World Services of LaCrosse in Russia enhanced cancer nursing skills as well as increased health care system capacity for prevention, screening and care through expanding the scope of practice of the nursing role.