Breaking down barriers, advancing health equity

Waking up each day with good health is something people no longer take for granted. But, the reality is, there are vast disparities in who has good health, and who doesn't.

These health disparities are often driven by interconnected social and economic issues like poverty, structural racism, and access to healthcare, education and opportunity. The challenges are immense, and the numbers are startling. There's a seven-year difference in life expectancy between different racial and ethnic groups. Low-income Americans are five times more likely to report poorer health, and have higher rates of physical limitation, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other chronic conditions. These disparities are not new but they have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, as communities of color and low-income Americans face greater risks from the virus.

At Abbott, we're focused on advancing health equity through our business and in partnership with others. To deliver results, we've laid out long-term targets for our business as part of our 2030 Sustainability Plan, and we've made equitable care a key principle for our community partnerships.

Advancing Innovation, Access and Affordability

Our purpose is to help people live fully – and we do that by committing day in and day out to creating new technologies that improve people's lives. Pursuing this purpose means we need to create products that are not just effective, but are affordable and accessible to more people who need them. That's why we focus on intentionally designing these elements into the core of how we create new products to improve the health of more people, in more places than ever before.

This approach already has allowed us to make an important impact in the fight against COVID-19, transform the management of diabetes, and extend the reach of heart tech to newborns in need. To learn more, see our story Innovating for Access Now and in the Future.

Removing Barriers to Health

Abbott also is working to address the social determinants of health, the interconnected factors in our everyday lives – including healthcare, education, the environment, structural racism, economic opportunity and others – that impact our health and drive health disparities. Abbott and the Abbott Fund have partnerships that address these challenges through community-driven efforts:

• Future Well Communities is a program targeting diabetes and other health disparities in communities by addressing the social and economic barriers to good health. This multi-year Abbott Fund program was launched in 2019 in Stockton, Calif., which was recently named the most diverse large city in America. We're working with local government, leading institutions and community groups to increase access to health, education, healthy food and economic opportunity.
  
  
• Future Well Kids: Delivered by Abbott employee volunteers in countries around the world, our Future Well Kids program encourages young people across 15 underserved communities in the U.S. to take charge of their own health today by developing habits that will help them maintain good health throughout their lives, through fun and interactive curriculum.
  
  
• Addressing hunger: For more than 20 years, Abbott has partnered with Feeding America^® to help meet critical community needs across the country. We've donated more than $100 million in nutritional products, including longtime support for the Feeding America BackPack Program, which provides children and families with nutritious and easy-to-prepare food they need to get enough to eat on the weekends. Abbott donated 1.5 million feedings of Similac infant formula to Feeding America member food banks in eight cities across the nation experiencing significant need due to COVID-19. We also work together to help communities build resilience and prepare for hurricane season, and we step up when disaster strikes.

These are just some examples of our work to advance health equity, specific to the U.S. We also have longstanding, significant work in other countries around the world – you can find out more and see examples at Abbott.com/Sustainability, and also on the Social Impact section of our site.