BURLINGTON, N.C. & ALDIE, Va.– Labcorp, a leading global life sciences company, and Tigerlily Foundation (Tigerlily), a leading breast cancer patient advocacy organization, today announced a new collaboration to increase clinical trial diversity for women of color and co-create health equity solutions. Labcorp has signed Tigerlily’s #InclusionPledge for Black Women, joining other healthcare and life sciences companies in committing to eradicate barriers for women of color in accessing cancer care and research. Together, Tigerlily and Labcorp will work to end health disparities through the #InclusionPledge.
“Race, literacy, financial barriers, access, social, systemic and hereditary backgrounds should not be determinants of life and health equity. To continue to accelerate and make an impact as it relates to disparities and women of color, the #InclusionPledge is imperative. As an organization, Tigerlily Foundation was founded to address inequity—of age, of stage and of color. We have invested significantly in addressing disparities affecting women of color—to ensure that they are equal partners at every table and will continue to do so. We are honored to have Labcorp support the #InclusionPledge, as they are so closely associated with many initiatives directly impacting the future of patient care. We are looking forward to our ongoing relationship and activities to foster inclusion,” said Tigerlily Foundation CEO and Founder, Maimah Karmo.
The mission of the #InclusionPledge is to advocate and activate the inclusion of women of color across initiatives impacting overall health. The pledge provides a transparent and tangible framework across industry and healthcare stakeholders that identifies and tracks equity actions, and holds organizations accountable to specific, measurable outcomes that can lead to greater health equity for women of color. The #InclusionPledge focuses on moving stakeholders from talk to transformation and driving change and innovation.
This collaboration focuses on finding solutions to promote health equity amongst women of color and dismantle barriers that have made access to clinical trials challenging.
“Making healthcare accessible to all and encouraging a company culture that embraces diversity is a priority at Labcorp,” said Brenda Velasquez Wagner, chief diversity and inclusion officer at Labcorp. “By signing the #InclusionPledge, we continue to support diversity across all areas of healthcare, especially in clinical trials, where a diverse population of participants provides valuable and necessary insight into effective patient care. Labcorp is committed to inclusive clinical research and is driving innovative solutions to increase representation of racial and ethnic minorities in clinical trials. Labcorp is working to build trust across communities with various engagement activities, including the Tigerlily Community Listening Summit to gain insights from breast, ovarian and cervical cancer patients to incorporate into clinical trials and develop a best practices framework to make sites more inclusive.”
The #InclusionPledge is one of many actions led by Tigerlily to improve awareness, education, access, delivery and outcomes of treatments, and resources for women with breast cancer. To date, the Inclusion Pledge has more than twelve thousand individual signatures and more than 90 commitments from corporations and institutions.
