McKesson Honored As 2014 Community Health Partner of the Year
Award received as part of the San Francisco Business Times' Corporate Philanthropy Awards & Summit
SAN FRANCISCO, July 28, 2014 /3BL Media/ – On July 24, 2014, McKesson received the honor of Community Health Partner of the Year as awarded by the San Francisco Business Times during its annual Corporate Philanthropy Awards & Summit. The award recognized McKesson’s outstanding community and social engagement in San Francisco for its work to support Giving Comfort, a program of the McKesson Foundation, which distributes care packages called “Comfort Kits” to low-income cancer patients in the Bay area and across the country.
Most recently, McKesson held its first-ever “Walk and Roll” event to benefit Giving Comfort. More than 500 McKesson Bay Area employees took part in the event, and fundraised over $10,000 in support of Giving Comfort. Across the U.S., McKesson employees have raised nearly $500,000 for Giving Comfort since the program began in autumn 2012 through walks and the company’s Employee Giving Campaign.
Winners at the Summit were determined by a selection committee of local experts with backgrounds in a variety of corporate and philanthropy fields based on a recent successful initiative promoting community health involvement through active promotion of knowledge, policies, practices, social conditions and environmental stewardship that support optimal health and well-being in the Bay Area.
Other Partner of the Year categories include education, sustainability, change and innovation, and impact.
“McKesson is proud to support better health in our communities, and we are honored to receive this award,” said Carrie Varoquiers, President, McKesson Foundation. “McKesson will continue to seek out opportunities to serve and support our wonderful Bay Area community through innovative philanthropy and employee volunteer programs.”
Nearly one quarter of people with cancer will exhaust all savings as a result of treatment costs, even with insurance, and 11% of cancer patients cannot afford food and basic necessities due to treatment costs. It’s during these times that comfort items and inspiring words can have the most enduring impacts, and the McKesson Foundation is constantly working to fill that need through this unique and innovative program with distribution partners across the country, including organizations in the Bay Area like Breast Cancer Emergency Fund, Ronald McDonald House Palo Alto, Family House, San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and more.
For examples and videos of how the McKesson Foundation is working to fight cancer with comfort, visit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS_LKPNlMek
For more information on the McKesson Foundation’s Giving Comfort program, visit: www.givingcomfort.org
###
About McKesson Foundation
The McKesson Foundation is a healthcare foundation focused on providing funding to organizations that provide non-medical direct services to low-income cancer patients in the U.S. Each year the McKesson Foundation contributes more than $5.5 million to nonprofit organizations working to improve the health of our communities. Over the past three years, the Foundation has matched more than $3.3 million in employee donations to charitable organizations. For more information about the McKesson Foundation, please contact us at mckessonfoundation@mckesson.com.
About Giving Comfort
This year, more than 1.6 million people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer. Hundreds of thousands struggle to pay for basic needs, leaving them unable to afford the comfort items that make treatment more bearable. A nonprofit program of the McKesson Foundation, Giving Comfort fights cancer with comfort. It provides patients with Comfort Kits – cancer care packages filled with essential items that help ease the discomfort caused by treatment. Patients in need receive Comfort Kits free-of-charge through a network of Distribution Network Partners, which include hospitals, cancer treatment centers and hospitality houses. Through its e-store, Giving Comfort offers Comfort Kits for sale, with all proceeds going toward Kits for those in need. To learn more, visit www.givingcomfort.org.
