Improving Health Equity Across the Pharmaceutical Industry

Health equity is crucial to ensuring access for all individuals to essential care. And pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are pushing for necessary long-term changes to better meet the needs of vulnerable individuals and populations. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and the substantial economic decline it caused have highlighted healthcare inequities for BIPOC and other diverse populations, including individuals with disabilities, rural communities, and more.

Now, many companies and organizations, such as pharmaceutical companies, innovative technology companies, and patient advocacy groups, are addressing health disparities in an integrated way.

“It’s very important to disaggregate data and see how patient populations are being affected not only by COVID-19 but also other big-ticket diseases that people are facing like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and immunological diseases,” Patti Doykos, executive director of health equity at Bristol Myers Squibb, told PharmaNewsIntelligence.

“Everyone is now addressing this in a very integrated way, and they’re making it a priority for their organization. It’s a sign that you’re doing things well if you are taking a health equity approach because you’re really looking at the full patient need,” Doykos continued.  

Bristol Myers Squibb is a global pharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, and delivers innovative medicines to help patients tackle serious diseases. Currently, the company is headquartered in New York and has nearly 250,000 employees in 56 office locations across 21 countries.

Doykos was recently appointed as the health equity lead at Bristol Myers Squibb, a topic that has become a core focus for the company and furthers its initiative to build new capabilities and transform more lives through technology and science. 

“BMS was a really big HIV/AIDS company, so many lessons came to us through that experience. Health equity and addressing health disparities, being aware of them, and looking at the needs of underserved patient populations has long been a priority for BMS,” Doykos said. 

Although Black Americans make up about 13 percent of the US population, Latinx about 18 percent, and Asians more than 5 percent, those demographics aren’t reflected in clinical trials.  

A March JAMA Network Open study found that overall, White individuals are overrepresented (77.9 percent of the time) in clinical trials. In the same trials, Black individuals are represented only 10.6 percent of the time, and Latinx participants were represented just 11.6 percent of the time. 

So, last summer, Bristol Myers Squibb made five big commitments, two of which focus on expanding health equity and clinical trial inclusion.

Additionally, the commitments touch on disease awareness and education programs for underserved communities, driving a policy that promotes health equity, and developing programs that create awareness and lead to more utilization and clinical trial diversity.

Social determinants of health, including socioeconomic status, education, environment, employment, and access to care, is directly related to health equity. So, addressing social determinants is important to reduce longstanding health inequities and improve clinical trial access for all. 

Bristol Myers Squibb focuses on two pillars in its health equity strategy, Doykos explained. 

The first pillar is to discover, develop, and deliver therapies to bring more inclusivity into its company as a whole.

And the second pillar is to advance healthcare solutions beyond therapies, such as addressing social determinants of health that patients face. This includes educating specialists across disease areas on social determinants of health, including the kind of screening tools out there.

“Our R&D organization works with patients to understand the barriers they may face to participate in the clinical trials and looks for ways to address them or to remove those barriers from participation,” Doykos stated.     

“We know social determinants of health are drivers of health disparities and inequities, so it’s very important to pay attention to them. For us, it’s very much a build on our history of work in the health equity space, and now we want to get better at it ourselves,” she continued.  

Bristol Myers Squibb is also making $50 million in grants over the next five years to address disease awareness and education in underserved patient populations, part of which is addressing social determinants of health.

Most recently, Bristol Myers Squibb donated $11 million to 56 nonprofit organizations focused on advancing health equity in vulnerable populations in the US. The grant recipients included US-based patient advocacy and community-based organizations, health equity coalitions, medical societies, nonprofit healthcare institutions, and more. 

But one of the company’s main goals is to have 25 percent of clinical trial research sites located in highly diverse communities by 2022.

“It is really important to understand what patient needs and priorities are, what they would like to achieve, and what their vision of what health equity would be here. We need to pull every lever that we have to push forward on health equity, whether it’s diversity in clinical trials, addressing health disparities in the need for more information in communities, or supporting organizations that fight discrimination,” Doykos concluded.