Bris­tol My­ers meets some di­ver­si­ty goals ear­ly, while miss­ing oth­ers

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb has met some of its big health eq­ui­ty goals ear­ly, while miss­ing two in­ter­nal goals fo­cused on di­ver­si­fy­ing its work­force. Now, the com­pa­ny says it’s set­ting the bar a lit­tle high­er.

Bris­tol My­ers an­nounced on Wednes­day that rough­ly 58% of its clin­i­cal tri­al sites are now lo­cat­ed in eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse ar­eas, sur­pass­ing its ini­tial goal of 25%. The news comes as the pan­dem­ic casts a harsh spot­light on the lack of di­ver­si­ty in clin­i­cal tri­als. Of the 53 drugs ap­proved in 2020, Black pa­tients rep­re­sent­ed just about 8% of tri­al par­tic­i­pants that reg­u­la­tors based their de­ci­sions on, and His­pan­ic pa­tients rep­re­sent­ed just over 12.6%.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER