Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Morehouse School of Medicine partner

The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation and Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) today jointly announced the creation of the Morehouse School of Medicine/Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation Partnership for Equity in Diabetes. The partnership will be based at MSM’s National Center for Primary Care (NCPC) in Atlanta.

The partnership, which is funded through a five-year, $2.1 million grant from the Foundation, will share successful models and best practices emerging from the Foundation’s Together on Diabetes initiative and other demonstration projects with the broader U.S. diabetes, community health, public health and primary care practice communities. To date, Together on Diabetes has provided $44.4 million in funding to grantees that are developing, implementing and evaluating community-based care and support projects in and with more than 55 heavily affected communities across the U.S.

“Given the devastating impact of diabetes on minorities, the elderly and the poor, there is great urgency to both figure out what works and to share and scale those solutions,” said John L. Damonti, president, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. “We are fortunate to partner in this work with Morehouse School of Medicine, which is a constant and transformative force in creating health equity in the United States.”

“Through this grant and the formation of the Partnership for Equity in Diabetes, we have a strategic opportunity to celebrate what is really working in diverse communities across the country, to share their lessons learned and to engage new communities in working together to achieve more optimal diabetes health outcomes for all,” said George Rust, Professor of Family Medicine and Director, NCPC, Morehouse School of Medicine.

Announcement of the partnership comes during National Minority Health Month, which is a call to action and unity in the effort to reduce health disparities. Type 2 diabetes is a serious public health problem in the U.S. that places a disproportionately higher disease burden on minority populations. Approximately 18.7 percent of African Americans and 11.8 percent of Hispanic/Latino Americans over age 20 live with the disease compared with 8.3 percent of the total U.S. population. Compounding these statistics, minority populations also face disparities in access to services and supports needed for successful and sustained control of their diabetes.

The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation launched Together on Diabetes in the United States in November 2010. The five-year, $100 million U.S. arm of the initiative targets adult populations disproportionately affected by type 2 diabetes and focuses on improving their health outcomes by strengthening patient self-management education, cultivating community-based supportive services and promoting broad-based community mobilization.

NCPC is the only congressionally sanctioned academic research, training and resource center focused on promoting excellence in community-oriented primary care and optimal health outcomes for all Americans, with a special focus on serving underserved communities.

Through this partnership, NCPC will capture, spread and replicate successes drawn from Together on Diabetes grantees and other demonstration and quality improvement projects through three core activities:

• An online learn-share-connect portal and resource center for training and implementation support
• Identification and mobilization of five implementation experts from the base of grantees who will help other communities apply the lessons learned, and
• Starting in late 2014, recruitment and engagement of 10 to 12 community coalitions to comprehensively implement successful models of clinic and community care and support, track diabetes clinical and self-management outcomes and participate in a national learning collaborative.

You can learn more about Together on Diabetes at www.TogetherOnDiabetes.com. To view an interactive map showing the location and project details of the Together on Diabetes project sites in the U.S., go to www.bms.com/togetherondiabetes/partners/Pages/partners-map.aspx.