By Jennifer Farrington, Senior Director of Social Investing and Vice President of the BD Foundation

Community Health is one of four pillars in our new environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy, Together We Advance. Through this work, we collaborate with communities and NGOs throughout the world to invest our resources to do what’s right – especially when it comes to serving the most vulnerable.

An important component of this work is its deep connection to our three other Together We Advance pillars: Planet Health, Human Health and Company Health. We know that when we solve for challenges in one area, positive outcomes reverberate across all four pillars. We rely on our meaningful, long-term partnerships with trusted NGOs to help us deliver on our ESG commitment to Community Health in three strategic ways.

1. We work to advance healthcare access in vulnerable communities worldwide: As a leading, global med-tech company, BD is committed to Advancing the world of health, not just through our products and services, but through our charitable giving, too. We know that even though we’re now living in an era of unparalleled healthcare innovation, the reality is that not all people, in all communities, have equitable access to quality care.
   
   That’s why we focus our social investments on innovative efforts to expand healthcare access to the vulnerable patients and communities who need it most. Whether it’s through our nearly 25-year partnership with UNICEF to invest more than $10.8 million to eliminate maternal and newborn tetanus (MNT), or our $26.8 million commitment to help Direct Relief and U.S. community health centers to expand health equity by delivering quality care to uninsured and underinsured patients who otherwise would not be able to afford it, these partnerships are designed to have long-term, meaningful impact on community health.
    
2. We encourage and empower BD employees to make a meaningful difference in the communities and for the causes they care about:  Through our innovative, global, BD-sponsored Volunteer Service Trips, we invite employees to take paid time off to tackle some of the world's most pressing global health issues. These in-person and virtual service experiences empower employees to share their expertise and passions to help improve the overall quality of life for people who live in resource-poor regions ranging from sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean to Latin America, Southeast Asia, Haiti, Mexico and Peru.
   
   At BD sites around the world, we encourage employees to join together to support local organizations that improve the health and well-being of the most vulnerable in their communities through team-based acts of service – like organizing food drives for local pantries, riding, walking or cycling to raise funds for healthcare organizations, and bringing fresh drinking water to communities in need.
   
   We also partner with our Employee Resource Groups to create meaningful volunteer service experiences for their members – like our annual employee meal-packing event with Rise Against Hunger, through which we’ve packed more than one million shelf-stable meals for hungry families around the world. And we also match donations our U.S. employees make to non-profit organizations (which totaled nearly $2 million in FY21 alone) and offer mini-grants to organizations where our employees volunteer their time and talents.  
    
3. We help communities build their resilience: We also support community health through our commitment to disaster response and strategic product donation. For decades, we have partnered with international relief agencies including AmeriCares, MAP International, Heart to Heart International, Direct Relief, International Health Partners and others to help them build community resilience that enables quick and efficient responses to climate-related disasters like wildfires, floods and hurricanes and large-scale pandemic events, like COVID-19. Our partnerships with the NGO community also allow us donate unsold product – which would otherwise be disposed of – to communities in need. In FY21 alone, our partners helped us efficiently donate more than $11.1 million in BD products to vulnerable people in underserved communities around the world.  

Strategic philanthropy and volunteer service have always been central to BD’s commitment to doing what’s right for our employees, our customers, the patients we serve and our local and global communities. Through meaningful partnerships with our employees and trusted NGOs, philanthropy and service will continue to be central tenants of our Together We Advance strategy.

Learn more about our work and the projects we support in our latest sustainability report. Our sustainability reports, along with information about our ESG strategy and 2030+ goals are available, at www.bd.com/sustainability.