Community Vitality

Through our community-oriented programs, we strive to provide sustainable solutions to issues faced in areas where we have a presence around the world. Consideration is given to programs that address science and science education, access to health care and critical unmet needs unique to each of our global communities. In addition, Abbott employees give their time and expertise to help improve the quality of life in the communities where they live and work.

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.

Project Lead the Way

Project Lead the Way helps introduce high school students to the rigor and discipline of engineering and engineering technology prior to entering college, through courses that add another layer of education to the student's own college-preparatory mathematics and science courses. The long-term goal of the program is to attract more students to engineering, and help determine if the field is the right career choice for them. As a result, students who participate in program courses are generally better prepared for college engineering programs and more likely to be successful, cutting the attrition rate in these college programs, which currently exceeds 50 percent nationally. Abbott is involved in the work of the program as part of the leadership committee.

Legal Pro Bono Work

Pro bono service is part of Abbott's Legal organization's annual employee performance goal-setting process, with each employee required to contribute a minimum of 10 hours annually. In 2006, U.S. employees volunteered more than 2,000 hours of service, comprising more than 40 activities in Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, Texas and California. In 2007, the program is expanding to Legal employees outside of the United States.

Among the pro bono activities in 2006, more than 60 Abbott attorneys, paralegals and administrative professionals worked with Baker & McKenzie, an international law firm, and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), to help low-income legal immigrants seeking United States citizenship. As part of a yearlong commitment, these employees counseled nearly 70 applicants through the increasingly complex application process at naturalization clinics hosted every other month at Baker & McKenzie's offices in Chicago. Attorneys and legal staff worked one-on-one with the applicants to complete the necessary Immigration and Naturalization Service paperwork.

Abbott's service provides great assistance to these immigrants who cannot afford private counsel. Many applicants are elderly or lack fluency in English, making the citizenship process even more onerous.

Our partnership with Baker & McKenzie and the NIJC has been ongoing for a number of years. In 2003, the three organizations received the first Pro Bono Partner Award given by the American Corporate Counsel Association and the Pro Bono Institute at Georgetown University Law Center in recognition of our successful partnership.