Amgen Supported Initiatives


Amgen supports the work of patient advocacy groups and professional organizations that share a common goal of developing solutions to improve health outcomes and work toward patient empowerment and well-being. These are a few examples of the initiatives Amgen currently supports.

Cardiovascular Disease

American Heart Association (AHA): The AHA recently began a multi-year campaign to improve understanding, testing and treatment of LDL cholesterol, an important indicator of heart attack and stroke risk. The LDL-C Campaign will educate patients about the importance of knowing their LDL level and encourage them to take action through active conversations with their healthcare team to set up an appropriate care plan. AHA’s EmPOWERED to Serve™ Health Lessons, supported by Amgen, are accelerating community-driven solutions for reducing cardiovascular risk disparities, including elevated LDL-C, in under-resourced communities and communities of color.

Too many organizations are working in isolation from one another. Building more powerful public-private healthcare partnerships is vital to moving the needle in addressing public and population health challenges
— Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for Prevention for the American Heart Association.

CDC Foundation: Alliance for the Million Hearts® supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Million Hearts national initiative to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes. The Alliance leads campaigns like Live to the Beatand Heart Healthy Steps, which focus on helping people understand their personal risk, believe in their power to change it and then to take steps, like lowering their LDL cholesterol, to reduce their cardiovascular risk.

A problem as big as cardiovascular disease calls for a big collaboration. I feel particularly honored to work with Amgen and many others in a public-private coalition that is leveraging the power of social marketing to influence the knowledge, the attitudes, the beliefs that are involved in empowering more people to lower their risks for cardiovascular disease.
— Kinetra Joseph, Campaign Director for Alliance for the Million Hearts®.

Family Heart Foundation: Getting on Appropriate Lipid Management (GOAL) campaign connects the dots between hereditary risks for heart disease—elevated Lp(a) and LDL-C levels—and cardiovascular disease, helping individuals at risk to get an accurate diagnosis and appropriate, timely management to lower their LDL-C and Lp(a) levels per guideline recommendations.

Effective solutions to pervasive challenges like heart disease must work at many levels and for diverse groups. Multi-stakeholder collaborations are our best way to find the strongest solutions.
— Katherine Wilemon, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Family Heart Foundation.

Asthma

Allergy & Asthma Network: Not One More Life Trusted Messengersis acommunity outreach and virtual asthma coaching program bringing quality healthcare into under-resourced communities that are disproportionately impacted by asthma.

We are grateful to Amgen for supporting this impactful health equity work. The results speak for themselves. People enrolled in our coaching program report greater knowledge in managing their asthma, fewer asthma attacks and more confidence in asking questions at their healthcare appointments.
— Lynda Mitchell, MA, CAE, Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Allergy & Asthma Network.

Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America: Health Equity Advancement and Leadership (HEAL) program addresses disparities in communities of color that bear the heaviest burden of asthma.

With Amgen’s support, the HEAL program has been a great opportunity for us to expand into the local community and learn from the local leaders about the challenges their communities face when it comes to asthma.
— Kenneth Mendez, President & Chief Executive Officer of Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Psoriasis

Global Healthy Living Foundation: BIPOC Patient Voices: Living with Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis, supported as part of the 2022 UPLIFT initiative (see below), and Psoriasis: An Inside Out Disease, empower patients to take an active role in their disease, including Black, Indigenous and People of Color in whom diagnosis and treatment are often delayed because many healthcare providers are not aware of differences in how psoriasis appears on people with darker skin tones.

For BIPOC Patient Voices: Living with Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis, we recruited a diverse group of people from South Asian descent, from the Black community, from the East Asian community, to really get to know what they were experiencing. This not only gives them a chance to educate themselves, but also to educate their community.
— Sarah Shaw, Senior Manager of BIPOC Community Outreach at GHLF.

IFPA (International Federation of Psoriasis Associations): UPLIFT Innovation Program fosters the development of actionable solutions to address the challenges faced by the psoriatic disease community and their healthcare providers. Organizations around the world are awarded grants for projects that promote open dialogue about a patient’s health and treatment goals.

Significant areas of unmet need remain for people living with psoriatic disease. We chose to work with Amgen on the UPLIFT Innovation Program as a global opportunity fitting to the IFPA mission to improve the lives of all people living with psoriatic disease.
— Frida Dunger Johnnson, Executive Director of IFPA.

Oncology

Lazarex Cancer Foundation: Cancer Wellness HUB is a safe space that brings resources and services needed to overcome historical and cultural barriers to cancer care into communities, providing the greatest opportunity for a successful result.

With funding from Amgen, we built a service network and launched our inaugural ‘pop-up’ Cancer Wellness HUB in several underserved communities of color throughout Los Angeles. Our expansion will bring us one step closer to a viable solution for the reduction of cancer health disparities and a platform of equitable access.
— Dana Dornsife, Founder, Chief Mission and Strategy Officer of the Lazarex Cancer Foundation.

LUNGevity Foundation: No One Missed encourages people with non-small cell lung cancer to follow a talk, test and treat approach to learn about and seek precision care based on cancer biomarkers. Navigating KRAS is the foundation’s online resource to help patients learn about the most common mutation that drives non-small cell lung cancer.

With the generous support of Amgen, we are building on our success nationally while refining our efforts to ensure underserved audiences have access to our resources.
— Andrea Ferris, President & CEO of LUNGevity Foundation.

No One Left Alone Foundation: No One Left Alone is establishing a model for community oncology clinics to improve treatment disparities for non-small cell lung cancer by improving rates of biomarker tests that can provide key information patients and oncologists can use to guide treatment decisions.

Amgen’s willingness to come on board rapidly to support No One Left Alone inspires me about the genuineness of pharmaceutical partners in supporting patient care and philanthropic initiatives.
— Kashyap Patel, M.D., No One Left Alone Study Lead.

Health Equity

HEAL: The Health, Education, Advocacy and Learning (HEAL) Collaborative forms meaningful partnerships with faith-based organizations and leverages relevant health education resources to help Black communities learn about healthy lifestyles, wellness & disease prevention, navigate local healthcare systems, access the latest medical treatments and technologies, and learn about early detection, health screenings and clinical trial enrollment.

Partnering with Amgen on its commitment to health equity has given us the opportunity to challenge the status quo on how and by whom trusted health information is presented in Communities of Color.
— Howard Mosby, CPA, Board Member, Corporate Treasurer and Interim Chief Operating Officer of the HEAL Collaborative.

StoryCorps: Every Patient Counts, Every Story Matters: Health Equity Series is putting a human face on healthcare challenges by illuminating the shared experiences of individuals either facing health disparities or working to change them.

Storytelling is a trust-building exercise. With this innately human process of storytelling, we can get a clearer picture of where and how we can support communities as they pursue health.
— Murphy Barney, StoryCorps’ program lead for the Amgen partnership.