Bristol Myers Squibb and the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation have announced a combined commitment of $300 million to advance health equity and strengthen diversity and inclusion in the United States.

The investments will support initiatives focused on addressing health disparities, increasing clinical trial diversity, growing the company's spend with diverse suppliers, and expanding Black/African-American and Latinx employee representation at all levels of the company. To that end, BMS will accelerate disease awareness and education outreach efforts to at-risk patients, expand access to quality health care, improve health outcomes for medically underserved populations, and build clinical trial infrastructure in diverse communities and high-disease-burden areas.

The foundation also will launch a fellowship program aimed at training and mentoring two hundred and fifty new racially and ethnically diverse investigators over five years; provide a two-to-one match for U.S. employee donations to organizations working to address health disparities and discrimination; and  work to achieve gender parity at the executive level globally and double Black/African-American and Latin representation in its executive ranks in the U.S. by 2022. 

"Clinical trial diversity needs acceleration," said Bristol Myers Squibb chief medical officer Samit Hirawat. "We see tremendous opportunity for longer-term, sustainable impact by supporting ethnically diverse physician scientists to engage in clinical research while also establishing clinical research sites in diverse communities."