Patients & Communities

To ensure the efficacy and safety of our medicines, we need to authentically engage our patients and communities in the discovery, development and delivery processes.

BMS has been focused on a global effort to increase diversity in clinical trials for nearly a decade. This fueled our commitment in 2020 to invest $150 million over five years to accelerate I&D and Health Equity. Because of the company’s leadership in this space, we were able to build on our many years of experience to expand our clinical trial diversity commitment, which accelerated our existing efforts to include identifying and activating clinical trial research sites in racially and ethnically diverse cities across the U.S. This focus has also shifted how we conduct clinical trials with an eye toward making them more accessible, diverse and inclusive — both in terms of the investigators conducting trials and the patients who enroll in them. We are proud to share that 54% of U.S. clinical trial sites were located in highly diverse communities in 2021.

Our supplier diversity initiative is a global imperative with partnerships in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Asia. Through collaborations with diverse-owned suppliers and businesses, we continue to drive cutting-edge, innovative products and services that benefit patients and communities, while helping our business partners thrive through the creation of jobs and other positive impacts.

For BMS, supplier diversity provides “next generation” innovation and competitive advantage across the business value chain while enabling our ability to care for, support and address the economic gaps — a social determinant of health outcomes — that exist across diverse communities. Our goal is to develop and build the capacity of these businesses through mentoring and by providing scholarships to supplier development programs.

Diverse supplier spend

To demonstrate our commitment to ensuring a culture of inclusion and belonging, a diverse team of BMS colleagues along with Integrated Facilities Management partner Jones Lang LaSalle, led a collaborative sourcing effort to harmonize the food services program across the BMS network. The team selected SodexoMagic, a minority-owned business enterprise (MBE), to be the food and service provider at 17 BMS sites in the U.S.

SodexoMagic, which sits within the portfolio of business icon and retired basketball superstar Earvin (Magic) Johnson (owner of 51% of SodexoMagic), has a direct social impact on the community. The partnership aligns with the overall mission of our supplier diversity program, which uses agility and innovation to drive economic development through wealth and job creation. BMS now offers its employees and visitors a renewed culinary program with modern recipes that serve culturally enriched food options, all while promoting sustainability.

“SodexoMagic is very closely aligned with how BMS works and with our values,” said Brian Voss, associate director, Facilities Services Procurement. “Magic Johnson is big on issues around health equity, community building and more.

The Bristol Myers Squibb employee giving program is a year-round initiative that supports our employees in the U.S. and Puerto Rico in donating to eligible charitable organizations. Contributions are matched by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

Since the inception of the 2:1 employee giving program as part of our I&D and Health Equity commitments in September 2020, our employees donated $267,400 to 24 designated organizations that fight discrimination and promote social justice such as the Equal Justice Initiative, the Trevor Project and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the World Institute on Disability and the Asian and Pacific Islander Health Forum, which represent U.S. and global outreach organizations. Overall, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation matched employee donations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico 2:1 to the tune of $534,800 for a total of $802,200 donated to these designated organizations between September 2020 and December 2021. In 2021, employees in the U.S. and Puerto Rico received matching donations of more than $7.5MM.

To advance diverse representation in U.S. clinical trials, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, an independent charitable organization, has established the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program. This unique initiative seeks to improve representation of diverse investigators in clinical trials. It is known that patients in underrepresented groups are more likely to trust and seek care and guidance from physicians or investigators who have had similar lived experiences.

With that in mind, the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, along with nonprofit healthcare partners, is training and developing more than 250 new clinical investigators across the country who are racially and ethnically diverse or who have a demonstrated commitment to increasing diversity in clinical trials. This robust effort also is introducing and attracting more than 250 medical students from underrepresented communities to clinical research career pathways, changing the face of clinical work.

The program also assists investigators in building capacity and will support the expansion of clinical trial sites in communities with diverse patient populations.

In addition to this program, ongoing grants from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation will continue to make a substantive impact in efforts to narrow racial gaps in treatment and achieve health equity.

*BMS donates to the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, an independent charitable organization

Underrepresented groups in scholar selection

In 2021, 52 scholars were selected through the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation's Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program with 73% coming from groups underrepresented in medicine: 19 Latino/Hispanic; 19 Black/African American; 6 South Asian; 5 Caucasian; 1 West Asian; 1 Middle Eastern; 1 Asian American*.

PREVIOUS SECTION

NEXT SECTION