When someone has cancer or is being cared for by a family member or friend, questions multiply every day -- about the medical care they may need, about reimbursement, about child day care. That’s where collaborations between Cancer Care, the leading patient and caregiver support organization in the United States, and the philanthropic contributions of Bristol-Myers Squibb can make a huge difference.

“Bristol-Myers Squibb has been very generous in supporting programs and materials that help us do our job,” explains Cancer Care executive director Diane Blum. “Among many roles that we serve, we help to educate patients so that they can be active participants in their treatment and to help caregivers understand exactly how they can help -- and get help for their loved ones with cancer.”

Since 1993, Bristol-Myers Squibb charitable contributions have helped Cancer Care establish and operate a toll free counseling and information line -- the only one of its kind that provides a professional counseling service by phone to anyone in need. “With that, we reach more than 80 percent of the country and field more than a thousand calls each week,” Blum says. “And while we have many funders today, Bristol-Myers Squibb took a chance on us at the beginning, enabling us to raise additional funds to staff the counseling center and move from being a regional to a national organization. And it continues to support us every year. And when we wanted to extend it nationally, they helped us again.” Today, about half the questions addressed by counselors focus on the financial issues posed by cancer -- insurance, transportation to and from treatment, lost wages and financial hardships. The other half is about helping patients and caregivers make treatment choices, navigate the health care system, and communicate in the workplace and with families about the disease.

Bristol-Myers Squibb philanthropic support has also been key in a collaboration among its Foundation, the National Association of Social Workers and Cancer Care in a multi-year effort to train social workers to provide community-based care by creating expertise and awareness. In addition, to online continuing education courses launched in 2004 in which nearly 25,000 social workers have participated, more than 600 social workers have been trained in counseling individual with cancer and their families in face to face sessions. A train the trainer model has continued to expand that outreach along with an online course for use in counseling caregivers -- for which nearly 4,000 social workers have registered.

“All these efforts,” Blum adds, “have been remarkable. What’s more the support has been consistent with Bristol-Myers Squibb’s desire to help get the help that’s best for patients ­ without tying that help to any specific therapeutic area or specific type of cancer. The support comes with no strings attached.”

The role of caregivers has taken on even greater importance today, and company support has helped direct Cancer Care efforts in this emerging area as well. “The good news with cancer today is that people live longer with a better quality of life,” she says. “But that means that they often need treatment and care for a long time. The chronic nature of the disease often takes its toll emotionally and financially on both the patients and the caregivers. For caregivers, the challenge is to be a caregiver while also trying to maintain other areas of their life. It’s a challenge we try to help them meet.”

A social marketing campaign to improve the quality of care for patients with acute coronary syndrome introduced by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) is getting a boost with major charitable support from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Aimed at hospitals, physicians and patients, Take ACTION is a nationwide project that will provide data registries to track patient outcomes, develop educational tools and resources for physicians to help guide treatment and seek to encourage patients themselves to modify their behaviors to adhere to treatments in order to reduce secondary coronary events.

Among these efforts will include tools for physicians to create awareness about clinical practice guidelines and recommended therapies for acute coronary syndrome and chronic coronary disease to improve both physician adherence to guidelines as well as patient compliance. Educational materials and web sites are also planned.

The initial focus will be on ensuring the highest quality -- and most effective -- treatments for patients who have already had an acute coronary event from the time they are discharged from the hospital through the first 30 days after discharge -- a critical period. Government data suggest a variation in the quality of care among health care providers during this time. One important question becomes, says Jack Lewin, M.D., ACC’s CEO, “is what are the best hospitals doing that can be adopted by others and how can we get that message across?” To do that, the campaign will measure behavioral changes in both physicians and patients as new tools are developed and disseminated to a wide variety of affected audiences.

“Among other things that are planned are various registry programs to help physicians and hospitals track patient populations, what medications they’re taking and whether health care providers are providing treatments based on guidelines,” says Mark Peters, who is responsible for advocacy activities in the cardiovascular therapeutics area at Bristol-Myers Squibb. “For instance, upwards of 30 percent of patients discharged from hospitals after an acute coronary event like a heart attack or a stroke never even get their prescriptions filled for medications that can help them following that event. Some just don’t believe they’re sick any longer. So we need to educate patients, but also help doctors and hospitals find out what is actually happening and how to effect changes in behaviors to improve patient outcomes.“

Lewin agrees. “So many more people now have heart disease that the need to prevent secondary events is growing exponentially. Acute coronary syndrome covers the full continuum of heart disease, from stable angina to unstable angina to the most acute forms of heart attack,” he explains. “Many of these patients end up in the hospital with some sort of event. The aim here is to reduce secondary events. We want to make sure they don’t have to return to the hospital, that they’re taking their medicines and for doctors, to make sure that they’re complying with recommended guidelines for treating these patients.”

The campaign is anchored in the data registries themselves that will help campaign participants develop the data that can lead to the right messaging and actions for different target populations. “Registries are quality improvement tools. They give physicians and hospitals a view of how they’re doing versus the national average, their peers and even within their own practices,” Lewin adds.

Currently baseline data are being gathered in these registries so that once various awareness campaigns roll out as part of Take ACTION, participants can measure the effect of various tools on patient outcomes.

In the initial phases of the campaign, key messages will be crafted, appropriate communications tools developed and strategic partners lined up. To date, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the ACC, CVS/Caremark, Mended Hearts, Spirit of Women, PCNA, and a number of other organizations have all agreed to partner in this effort. Other organizations are expected to join over the next year.

“One of the things that is groundbreaking in this campaign,” says Lewin, “is that while we have seen other programs seek to increase awareness of heart disease, none has measured whether their campaigns have succeeded in doing that. We hope that this effort will have measurable results. The overarching goal is secondary event prevention and how we’re going to change provider and patient behavior to make that happen. And this is not one year engagement. It has to be a multiple year effort.”

This year’s 22nd annual AIDS Walk -- held in May 2007 -- was the largest and most successful ever, attracting some 45,000 walkers, helping raise more than $6.8 million to support a wide range of AIDS-related outreach and service programs. As in the past, Bristol-Myers Squibb joined the walk -- with a charitable contribution that made it the Walk’s premier corporate sponsor.

“Bristol-Myers Squibb gives $2 million in charitable contributions to different community-based HIV organizations across the United States each year,” says Jessica Riviere, Bristol-Myers Squibb Virology Associate Director of Advocacy and Policy. “But more than that, our employee participation in such important events is huge.” Some 750 Bristol-Myers Squibb employees, representing seven sites in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut metropolitan area, participated in the walk. This walk its special because it support the work of GMHC, which directly serves over 15,000 men, women and children in the New York area, including many of those newly affected by HIV, while also providing a variety other services to many thousands more.

“AIDS Walk is proof that New Yorkers care very deeply about AIDS here in New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S.,” Hill adds. “The generous support of Bristol-Myers Squib and its employees make this success possible.”

GMHC is a not-for-profit, volunteer supported and community based organization committed to national leadership in the fight against AIDS. “These dollars permit us to provide innovative direct service programs, outreach and education to hundreds of thousands, and fierce public policy leadership at all levels of government,” GMHC COO, Robert Bank notes.