Washington, November 8, 2004 – Aetna, Inc., one of the nation’s leading providers of health care joined the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility as a corporate partner.
"We welcome Aetna to the family of FORTUNE 1,000 companies leading the effort in corporate responsibility and market reciprocity to the Hispanic community," said Alfonso E. Martinez, president and CEO of the HACR. "Corporate Partners to HACR are truly committed to the Hispanic community as Aetna has admirably demonstrated through its efforts in philanthropy, leveling health care disparities, and cross-cultural understanding."
"We are pleased to join forces with HACR in what we hope will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Aetna has worked hard over the years to integrate diversity in all aspects of our business – among our employees, customers, suppliers and networks of health care professionals, and in our products and services. Partnering with HACR provides us an opportunity to reinforce our commitment to the Hispanic community to better understand and meet their unique health care needs. This is particularly important as we work to reduce disparities in health care by tailoring information and services offered to Aetna’s ethnically and culturally diverse membership," said Dr. John W. Rowe, chairman and CEO of Aetna.
Aetna has been an integral part of developing the Hispanics in Philanthropy Funders Collaborative. Through this program, over $17 million has been raised nationally for capacity building of Latino organizations in 15 sites. Aetna is a major fund provider, but more importantly Aetna works hands on closely with Hispanics in Philanthropy to develop the concept and implement it.
Aetna is also leading the effort in fixing Health Care Disparities among minority communities. According to a 2002 report from the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit government advisory arm of the National Academy of Sciences, minorities tend to receive lower quality health care than non-minorities, even when both have similar health insurance and income. To target minority employees with health problems, Aetna developed software to pull information out of a pharmacy database that the insurer keeps for payments purposes.
Aetna launched a pilot project this year with Marriott International to address the health-care concerns for its employees through education and outreach, with the goal of reducing health care disparities and optimizing communication between Spanish-speaking Marriott employees and their health-care providers. Both Aetna and Marriott are concerned about health literacy, language, and other cultural barriers in health care delivery. They learned through focus groups that diabetes, high cholesterol, and hypertension are common conditions. The pilot programs offer outreach calls and targeted mailings to Marriott members and primary care physicians in the Miami and Houston offices. Aetna will measure the success of the year-long program by measuring change in compliance with prescriptions during the 12 months of the program and improvements in hospital use, emergency room visits, and enrollment in disease management programs.
Over 95 percent of Aetna’s physicians, nurses, and clinical support employees have completed Cross Cultural Competency Training using a web-based module titled Quality Interactions: A Patient-Based Approach to Cross-Cultural Care, which was developed in conjunction with Critical Measures and the Manhattan Cross Cultural Group.
About Aetna
As one of the nation’s leading providers of health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability and long-term care benefits, Aetna puts information and helpful resources to work for its approximately 13.4 million medical members, 11.4 million dental members, 8.1 million pharmacy members and 12.6 million group insurance members to help them make better informed decisions about their health care and protect their finances against health-related risks. Aetna provides easy access to cost-effective health care through a nationwide network of more than 633,000 health care professionals, including over 377,000 primary care and specialist doctors and 3,866 hospitals (Figures as of June 30, 2004). For more information, please visit www.aetna.com .
About HACR
Founded in 1986 as a coalition of 11 prominent national Hispanic organizations, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, 501(c)3 organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C. HACR's mission is to ensure the inclusion of Hispanics in corporate America at a level commensurate with our economic contributions. HACR focuses on four areas of corporate responsibility and market reciprocity. They are: Employment, Procurement, Philanthropy, and Governance.
In pursuit of its mission, HACR offers corporate America direct access to the Hispanic community - its talent, entrepreneurs, and leadership - creating a forum to ensure corporate responsibility and market reciprocity for the nation's Hispanic population
For more information, please contact:
Omar Velarde-Wong
Director of Communications
Phone: 202.835.9672
Fax: 202.457.0455
ovelarde@hacr.org
