When we issued our June statement below in support of Black Lives Matter, we hoped that the groundswell of anti-racism voices and allyship would soon begin to bear fruit. Instead, eight months later, our country is seeing increasing violent attacks on Asian Americans, largely fueled by false narratives related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We stand with our Asian American and Pacific Islander colleagues and the AAPI communities. We must all continue to speak out against hatred wherever it appears, and unite as a force against racism.
June 3, 2020
It is more important than ever to step up and to speak out.
We stand with the Black community and our Black colleagues.
At Flatiron Health, our daily work is to improve lives by learning from the experiences of every cancer patient. We showed how disparities between Black and White cancer patients all but disappeared in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. We understand how comorbidities, frontline health-worker risks, and limited healthcare access combine to make COVID-19 disproportionately worse among Black Americans.
But recent days bring more harsh, real-time illustrations of how much we all have to learn, and how much more we all have to do, to end the pernicious racism, violence and inequality that are cancers in our society.
We don't know personally what it's like to live with the pain that Black Americans experience every day, and we should never pretend that we have the answers. But as leaders of a mission-driven company of 2,500-plus dedicated people, we are committed to actions that drive progress within our company and in our communities.
We promise that we will keep listening and learning. We will do the work to educate ourselves and help each other to be more informed and active advocates and allies to our Black colleagues. And we promise to leverage our platforms and our privileges where they can have the greatest impact.
Flatiron is making corporate and employee-match donations to organizations that address systemic racism and social injustice. Internally, we are opening more dialogues and extending more support and resources to our colleagues.
And today we are standing up to say publicly that recognizing and decrying racism as a moral wrong is not enough. Individually and together, we must all be a force against racism.
