Gilead’s giving supports community-driven solutions to help end the HIV epidemic for everyone, everywhere, and tackle global health issues. Carmen Villar discusses the importance of working with communities to ensure health care solutions reach those who need them most.
Globally in 2023, nearly 40 million people are living with HIV and approximately 1.3 million new infections were reported. Expanding access to medicines and improving quality of life has been at the heart of Gilead’s work over the past three decades, and the company has supported more than 2,000 organizations dedicated to addressing stigma, as well as tackling health and racial disparities in HIV care.
Through its giving, Gilead aims to advance critical work in HIV by supporting organizations that work with communities facing the greatest barriers to positive health outcomes. This funding supports a wide variety of programs and priority areas, including education, prevention, disease screening, access to treatment, and reduction of stigma and discrimination both in HIV and across the various other therapeutic areas in the company’s portfolio, said Carmen Villar, vice president of corporate citizenship and ESG at Gilead.
“We’re focused on extending our impact beyond developing medicines by also ensuring the company really plays a vital role in addressing these broader social challenges whether stigma, discrimination, or health inequities,” she said.
Devex spoke to Villar to learn about Gilead’s approach to design and deliver co-designed, community-driven solutions.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How does Gilead ensure its science and medicines reach the people who need them most? And who are the key partners in this effort?
Everyone working across Gilead believes in helping to get our scientific innovations to people who can most benefit. We’ve been doing a lot of work to engage with grassroots community organizations and get their feedback. The groups on the ground have relationships with different communities. We hope that by working with them, not only can we better understand some of the barriers individuals deal with every day around their health care and understand their real life experiences, but we’re also creating a partnership that helps local community groups advocate and address historical injustices.
Can you share an example of a global health issue where Gilead has made a meaningful impact and is scaling its efforts?
Gilead is probably best known for how it’s helped transform HIV from being a death sentence into being a treatable chronic condition, and we hope someday we will be able to find a cure for HIV. We partnered with companies under voluntary licensing agreements to make access available around the world, and that has served as a very successful approach for Gilead. In the United States, we do a lot of community partnerships — one of our biggest giving programs is the Gilead COMPASS Initiative®, which looks to advance health equity efforts in the southern U.S., where we see the most disproportionate rates of HIV infections among people of color. Our TRANScend Community Impact Fund® is focused specifically on improving health outcomes in this community. On a global level, our Zeroing In™ program is building on previous efforts to support organizations working to improve the health and wellness of populations impacted by HIV.
We will probably see more programmatic endeavors in 2025 around the HIV care nexus for migrant populations. Globally, it’s become a real challenge to get critical services, like health care, to communities that are constantly on the move. We also see language differences and persistent stigma when people need help the most. We’ve committed $4 million to improve equitable access to HIV care for migrant and mobile populations across Australia, Canada, and Europe, which is where we’re seeing a large influx of people looking for support. We’re hoping to really understand what the needs are on the ground and increase access to prevention and education services, but also testing and linkages to care.
“This support is about more than just addressing immediate health needs — it’s about empowering communities.”
— Carmen Villar, vice president of corporate citizenship and ESG, Gilead
What are the focus areas of your “Gilead for Good” giving strategy and how do they enhance the impact and scalability of Gilead’s programs and external projects?
One is around ensuring equitable access to care and removing barriers. The second is how to advance community-driven solutions by listening to communities and co-developing the solutions that are going to have the greatest impact on the ground. Lastly, we focus on working closely with our partners to end stigma and ensure that people are not afraid to seek the care they need, whether medicines or preventive services. What’s important is that we’re investing in solutions that come from communities themselves. If and when those solutions are working, then hopefully they can be translated into longer-term, sustainable programs that can work at multiple levels. People generally know what they need and what will work — the words are not always the same, but the programs that are created and guided by that feedback can really grow and last.
How will Gilead’s support make a difference to vulnerable communities in the U.S. and globally?
When we support a community organization, we’re not just helping them provide more services in their communities, we’re also helping them to build their own capacity to serve their community better in the long term. Globally, we’ve seen the effects of our support stretch far beyond the resources we’re helping to provide. Many of our partners have grown from small, grassroots organizations into powerful voices for their communities, where they’re not just delivering health services, but also shaping policy, fighting stigma, and creating lasting change for their communities and health care systems. This support is about more than just addressing immediate health needs — it’s about empowering communities to build stronger, more equitable health systems that will support them for years to come.
What advice would you give to other companies looking to provide meaningful support toward global health?
There’s no one right way to do this but, in Gilead’s case, we don’t assume we know the answer, and what we think might make the most difference might not be the biggest issue individuals and communities face. The only way to make sure our resources are making the biggest impact is by listening to the people on the ground. This takes a bit of humility, and it’s not always something that people working in big corporations think about, but creating true partnerships and supporting local capacity and sustainability are some of the main goals.
Source: Devex
