2022 Health Equity Accelerator Awards

Published on: December 12, 2022

At Sanofi, we believe every person has the right to a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible and no one should be disadvantaged from getting the care they deserve. We have a clear responsibility as a company to play our part in helping to improve access to medicines and transforming health equity.

We know that many organizations share this mutual goal and are finding solutions that work to improve equity and health. At Sanofi we want to identify, reward, support, and share efforts that work and accelerate the impact of these solutions to overcome health disparities. Sanofi is pleased to have created the Health Equity Accelerator Awards to recognize organizations that are making an impact in bridging gaps in access to care and improving equity.

The goal of these awards is to accelerate health equity solutions to overcome health disparities for the transplant community, for people living with AFib, and people living with diabetes, with a specific focus on the following three challenges:

  1. Atrial fibrillation - Ensuring women and Black Americans have equitable access to education about the signs and symptoms of atrial fibrillation and the need for appropriate treatment
  2. Diabetes - Ensuring minoritized people living with diabetes, including seniors, receive treatment, services, and educational support in line with national guidelines.
  3. Transplant - Ensuring minoritized populations receive equitable opportunities for stem cell and solid organ transplantation as well as education on the importance of organ and stem cell donation

A panel of five judges selected four winners based on these three goals. The judges were:

  • Adam Gluck - SVP and Head, US and Specialty Care Corporate Affairs, Sanofi
  • Dr. Laura Lee Hall - President, National Minority Quality Forum – Center for Sustainable Health Care Quality and Equity
  • Carolynn Johnson - CEO, DiversityInc.
  • Subarna Malakar - Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, North America and Global Specialty Care, Sanofi
  • Dr. Saria Saccocio - Regional Medical Officer, CareMore Health

Introducing the 2022 Health Equity Accelerator Award Winners!

Category - Stem Cell Transplant

  • Be The Match, Historically Black Colleges and Universities Campus Engagement Program

Category - Solid Organ Transplant

  • American Society of Transplantation, Finding Your Voice: How to be your own best advocate on your kidney transplant journey

Category - Atrial Fibrillation

  • StopAfib.org, Supporting Access to Care to Address Disparities

Category - Diabetes

  • Summit Health Cares, Food, Health, Hope Program: An Answer to Diabetes

Be The Match®, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP), is a nonprofit organization that’s dedicated to helping every patient get the lifesaving transplant they need. As trusted leaders in advancing treatments for those facing life-threatening blood cancers, they provide the ground-breaking research, innovative technologies, patient support and education that saves lives. They facilitated more than 111,000 blood stem cell transplants and 6,287 transplants last year to give patients hope for a future.

The Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Campus Engagement Program helps people from communities of color find a suitable match and access a potentially life-saving blood stem cell transplant by recruiting diverse and younger donors on HBCU campuses.

Be The Match hires and empowers student leaders from HBCUs to:

  • Find potential donors through awareness, education, collaborations with other student organizations and recruitment events
  • Dispel myths about donation and answer questions
  • Help people become part of the national bone marrow registry by sending swab samples to be typed and stored at the Be The Match biorepository
  • Elevate the stories of Black patients desperately searching for a donor match

The Health Equity Accelerator Award will fund expansion of the HBCU engagement program by adding 400 young, diverse registry members and seven additional campuses in 2023, helping Be The Match achieve their overall goal of 5,000 registrations through the HBCU Campus Engagement Program.

The American Society of Transplantation (AST) is the largest transplant organization in North America and is dedicated to advancing the field of transplantation and improving patient care by promoting research, education, advocacy, organ donation, and service to the community through a lens of equity and inclusion.

The toolkit will include educational resources for kidney disease patients in underserved populations. This first iteration will focus on Black and African American kidney patients, followed by Hispanic, Latina/o, and LatinX kidney patients. These resources will help individuals recognize chronic kidney disease and understand the transplant journey from referral to evaluation, and through post-transplant care so that they are equipped to take a primary role in advocating for their healthcare.

The Health Equity Accelerator Award funds will be used to develop the webpage to house the toolkit, cover expenses related to health care literacy review, translation into Spanish, and printing to promote this program in medical offices and the community.

StopAfib.org, part of the American Foundation for Women’s Health, was created as a patient-to-patient resource to share what founder, Mellanie True Hills, and other atrial fibrillation patients have learned. Their mission is to provide people with the information and answers they need to take control of their AFib.

Supporting Access to Care to Address Health Disparities will improve atrial fibrillation awareness, knowledge and education in women, Blacks, and Hispanics in rural communities of North Texas, which will lead to improved access to care and decreases in devastating health outcomes.

Supporting Access to Care to Address Health Disparities will:

  • Collaborate with rural community aging agencies to address access and health literacy needs
  • Establish an advocacy corps of volunteer retirees with AFib and medical / science backgrounds
  • Recruit non-clinician community health workers from aging agencies supporting the at-risk senior community
  • Develop and deliver courses to train volunteers and community health workers

The Health Equity Accelerator Award will fund:

  • Program planning and management
  • Development of training content and materials
  • Recruitment and training of AFib volunteer corps members
  • Development of a process to place volunteers with local aging agencies