Community Vitality
- The Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program, founded by Dr. Bill
Releford and sponsored by Abbott, seeks to empower African-American men to
better understand cardiovascular diseases through education, testing and
prevention. This program screened more than 5,000 African-American men in
nearly 200 black-owned barbershops in 2008.
- Thanks to the Backpack Program, backpacks filled with nutritious food
and juices are discretely distributed to some 35,000 children each Friday, some
containing extra food for younger siblings at home. Here two Abbott volunteers
prepare backpacks for distribution.
Helping to build healthier communities around the world is central to
Abbott's responsibilities as a corporate citizen. We want to make a significant
and long-lasting difference in people's lives — in the conduct of our business,
through our corporate and employee philanthropic activities and in our
employees' volunteer activities. We also strive to be an effective
philanthropic partner, working with a wide array of credible community-based
organizations and encouraging them in their efforts.
Our community initiatives focus on four areas where we can best apply our
knowledge, expertise and resources:
- Advancing community health care and wellness;
- Lending medical expertise and promoting scientific knowledge;
- Engaging Abbott employees in community vitality; and
- Safeguarding the local environment;
For example, we provide financial, product and volunteer support to Feeding
America and its School BackPack program to feed chronically hungry children.
The extensive list of initiatives we support is available on this Web site and
www.abbottfund.org.
Expanding Treatment to Uninsured Patients
We strengthened our ongoing partnership with HealthReach, a free medical
clinic, to provide services to the medically underserved in our headquarters
community of Lake County, Illinois. In 2006, our grant enabled HealthReach to
build capacity and secure the assistance of Executive Service Corps to initiate
a comprehensive planning process to drive efficiencies and expand services at
the clinic. This initiative is aimed to help more than 200,000 individuals who
are uninsured or underinsured in the community.