This year’s 2021 annual Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Grantee Summit brought together ourpartners and colleagues from across the globe to share lessons learned, explore challenges andinnovative solutions in cancer, cardiovascular, and immunologic care delivery for medicallyunderserved population, and hear from national and international experts on health equity. With ourtheme of “Reimagining a More Equitable Future Together”, our attendees had the opportunity to join
an interactive keynote with Dr. Olajide (Jide) Williams of Hip Hop and Public Health, a Q&A session onCOVID-19 and health equity with Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, co-chair of President Biden's COVID-19
advisory board, in addition to therapeutic area specific programming, national policy update, virtual
poster session, and TED-style talks.
“The closer you are to the problem, the closer you are to the solution”
Dr. Jide Williams, the founder and board chair of Hip-Hop Public Health and a renown tenured
Professor of Neurology at Columbia University outlined how health inequity for Black Americans isrooted in slavery, the effectiveness of children as intergenerational knowledge vectors, and theimportance of health literacy by leveraging arts, music, and science in a multisensory multilevel
health education model to address social determinants of health. He incorporated examples ofengaging hip-hop public health literacy videos his team developed with SUCCESs in mind (Simple,Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Stories) on topics such as salt/sugar intake, dementia,colon cancer, COVID vaccines, and stroke awareness. Dr. Williams, the “Hip Hop Doc”, ended his
keynote emphasizing how critically important it is to engage the communities we work to co-create
solutions to health inequities and reminded us all to see past our work agendas and observe thehumanity of the patients in front of us.
“Change occurs at the speed of trust”
In our Fireside Chats, our panelists discussed ways to dismantle structural racism:
1. Dr. Lauren Smith (CDC Foundation) asked us to reckon and acknowledge both our personaland organizational relationship with structural racism in order to systematically rethink andredesign our habits, assumptions, standards/criteria, indicators of success, such as economic
viability or measurements of scholarship, etc. We have to approach these conversations withpatience, openness, teaching attitude, and cultural humility.
2. Dr. Jide Williams (Hip-Hop Public Health) reflected on his own experience in leadership rolesand communicated how powerful the simple presence of having diverse and inclusive
members at the table can force accountability.
3. Dr. Eduardo Sanchez (American Heart Association) emphasized the ability of language tosimultaneously act as a trigger or unify/build trust depending on the audience. Practicepatience because just like community health equity work, long lasting organizational change
occurs at the speed of trust.
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4. Joy Lewis (American Hospital Association) challenged us to think about how we sustain themomentum to embed our efforts within the organization’s DNA and that we need to hold ourleaders and one another accountable and commit to the long-term work.
5. Patti Doykos (Bristol Myers Squibb) shared that we need to move away from measuring
activities and to seek change and impact that is defined and designed by the community. We
must listen and understand how our communities define success and meaningful change.
Community Partnerships – the key to successful health equity work
As the day progressed into a riveting TED talk by Dr. Sora Park Tanjasiri, and several grantee
presentations during our panel, it quickly became evident that intentional and thoughtful community
partnerships are central to successful health equity work. As Dr. Tanjasiri described her team’s
innovative hub and spoke model of coordinated care, we heard her message loud and clear: we needto actively move collaborative efforts outside of the silo of healthcare and bring it withincommunities.
Moderated by Shonta Chambers, Patient Assistance Foundation, we heard several grantee partners
present on a panel on “Lifting Voices & Mobilizing Communities”. At Yale Cancer Center, Beth Jonesand Sakinah Suttiratana created a Community Action Network that recruited voices living inopportunity neighborhoods as literacy/messaging consultants to reduce the research-to-practice gap.
Jalissa Powell at the American Heart Association centered her presentation on the idea of “Co-Create,Co-Develop, Co-Own” and stressed tactics to create accountability and ways to respect and value
their partners’ time. At Case Western, Erika Trapl and her team continue to work hand-in-hand withbarbers to help address the health needs of the whole man by turning barbershops into community
navigation hubs that respect the autonomy and choice of the patrons. In the Latinx population,
Angel Tapia from the Global Healthy Living Foundation worked to address misinformation by having
weekly meetings with their patient leaders centered around building authentic culturalinterpretations, identifying preferred communication tools (such as Whatsapp), and empowering
patients to self-advocate. At GO2Foundation for Lung Cancer, Kathy Levy described how they use aCommunity Health Advisor model to meet people where they are by offering services andinformation at a variety of locations and at nontraditional times. Although these projects spanned
different therapeutic areas, geographic areas, and patient populations the one thing they all had incommon that guaranteed success was keeping the community at the center of their work by
integrating their voices into the design and implementation of the program.
Our first conference day was wrapped up with a national policy brief by the director of Harvard’s
Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Robert Greenwald. He spoke of the policies createdduring the Trump administration, what action the Biden administration has taken to date, andnotable legislative and judicial battlegrounds to pay attention to in the coming months including theBuild Back Better reconciliation bill, CVS vs. Doe, and Kelley vs. Becerra.
For the second conference day, attendees broke out into therapeutic area specific tracks to foster
more intimate and relevant conversations. We invited expert faculty to share their perspective of thehealthcare landscape and to moderate our grantee presentations across lung cancer, pan-cancer,
cardiovascular disease, and immunology. These disease specific tracks allowed attendees to discuss
their progress, share moments of success and advise on pitfalls to avoid. We closed the second day
with a virtual poster Q&A session discussing lessons from our partners in engaging with theircommunities during COVID-19. The small breakout tracks and interactive Q&A session allowed fororganic networking and interactions in the virtual environment.
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On the third and final conference day, we invited our Global Cancer Disparities - Africa grantee
partners to present in three concurrent panels: Cancer Equity Across the Globe, Registries/Data
Tracking Healthcare Disparities, and Rural Health Disparities.
Marching for and Towards Equity“I hold deep gratitude to the grantees gathered here today who are doing the work on the frontlines,
marching for and towards equity. The work is always hyper local, rolling up the sleeves, showing up
every time, building and maintaining trust, sharing power, humbling oneself, recognizing andhonoring the expertise of the community”
We had the honor of welcoming Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Equity
Task Force, for a Q&A session. Dr. Nunez-Smith started the session by describing the origins of theUnited States’ inequitable response to the global pandemic: “It took centuries of intentionality to get
the state of structurally supported health inequities we are in today. We can see and predict theimpact of those most affected by any public health crisis simply by overlaying redlined districts”. She
quickly shifted into how to ensure actionable and sustainable change by calling to action ourgrantees to be trusted messengers: “It takes people who are already trusted and trustworthy to be inconversation with communities that have every reason to be skeptical [and] concerned of thescientific community and healthcare institutions to combat misinformation and leading withpositivity to connect people with information that is reliable”. In line with the rest of the conference,
Dr. Nunez-Smith ended the Q&A reminding us how key the community is to the success of our publichealth equity work: “We really need to elevate the voices and expertise of the communities that havebeen most affected. Engage deeply with communities - Share power, share decision making, be in thespirit of co-design/execution at every step across all sectors”.
Thank you!
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to all our colleagues and partners for taking the time toattend and present at this year’s summit, as well as a special thanks to all the staff at Bristol Myers
Squibb Foundation and National Network of Public Health Institutes for creating a seamless virtualexperience. We hope to welcome everyone safely back next year in an in-person format. Stay tuned
for more details as we plan for the next summit!

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