Highlights: Corporate Social Responsibility

The Highmark Bright Blue Futures charitable giving and community involvement program's goal is to ensure healthier, brighter, stronger futures for individuals and families across Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Delaware, and beyond. Its focus is to improve access to care, quality of life and economic resilience in the communities served. The aspiration is to improve outcomes in two critical areas: Community Health and Community and Economic Resilience.

The Highmark Bright Blue Futures program values being an active, innovative community partner, creating and maintaining meaningful partnerships to achieve lasting positive outcomes. The commitment goes beyond simply providing grants and includes leveraging team members' expertise and passion through volunteerism and convening community groups to drive efficiency and innovation. More information at highmark.com/brightbluefutures, and in the Highmark Bright Blue Futures Annual Report.

The seven charitable foundations affiliated with Highmark Health, including five Allegheny Health Network hospital foundations and Highmark Inc.'s two foundations, have long and proud histories of funding programs that improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for individuals in the communities each organization serves.

Foundations include:

Highmark Inc.

• Caring Foundation
  Funded primarily by Highmark Inc., its sole member, the Caring Foundation supports the Highmark Caring Place, A Center for Grieving Children, Adolescents, and Their Families. In 2024, the Highmark Caring Foundation provided $5 million to aid this program. More information at highmarkcaringplace.com.
• Highmark Foundation
  With support from Highmark Inc., the Highmark Foundation funds programs that promote the health and well-being of the communities served by Highmark Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.

  In 2024, Highmark Foundation committed more than $15 million in funding to support initiatives that addressed chronic disease, community health, family health, and service delivery systems. Highmark Foundation has two restricted funds: the Highmark West Virginia Charitable Fund for Health and the United Concordia Dental Charitable Fund.

  In 2024, the Highmark West Virginia Charitable Fund for Health awarded more than $1 million in grants to West Virginia-based nonprofit organizations in support of initiatives and programs focused on improving community health, family health, health care workforce development, and oral health. For example, the fund provided multiple grants to expand access to better oral care, including OVP Health Care Dentistry's "Sustaining Access to Quality Dental Care and Dentures in Tri-State Appalachia" initiative that delivers preventive dentistry services to youth in underserved areas.

  The United Concordia Dental Charitable Fund committed more than $1 million in funding throughout the United States to serve the health needs of the community, including workforce development programs; scholarships to dental schools; and community oral health and dental care efforts for the uninsured and underinsured. For example, the Fund supports TeamSmile, a national organization that partners with oral health professionals and athletic organizations to provide underserved children with dental care.

  More information at highmarkfoundation.org.

  Additionally, BluePrints for the Community, a community investment and grant program to help address the issues faced by Delaware’s uninsured and underserved populations, aims to increase access to care, reduce health disparities, and address health care workforce needs. It exists as a donor-advised fund at the Delaware Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that manages and administers charitable funds throughout Delaware. BluePrints for the Community committed $1 million to health-focused programs and projects in 2024.

Allegheny Health Network (AHN)

• Allegheny Health Network Charitable Foundations
  Alle-Kiski Medical Center Trust, Forbes Health Foundation, Saint Vincent Hospital Foundation for Health and Human Services, Suburban Health Foundation, and Western Pennsylvania Hospital Foundation support initiatives associated solely with their hospital facilities to better meet the care and health priorities of their communities.

  The five AHN foundations provided more than $8.6 million in funding in 2024 to support hospital-based programs, services, and facility upgrades to improve the overall well-being of the patients and communities served.

  More than $6 million in funding supported key priorities at West Penn Hospital, including the state-of-the-art Skin Cancer Center, Central Sterile Services renovation, and the Empowered Relief Program as part of the AHN Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Institute. Funding also supported the acquisition of the innovative EksoNR wearable exoskeletons to facilitate advanced rehabilitation for patients recovering from stroke, brain injury, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury.

  At Saint Vincent Hospital, $1.5 million supported initiatives including the expansion of the retail pharmacy, advancement of an automated pill dispensing system, and planning for the hospital's 150th anniversary celebration in 2025.

Highmark Health's Institute for Strategic Social and Workforce Programs (S2W) is expanding access to quality health care and delivering a respectful, personalized experience. Highmark Health creates a welcoming workplace by hiring people from its communities. This leads to better teamwork and improved services for everyone. The S2W is focused on: 

• Trust: Building trust with community members facing health care barriers by partnering with local organizations — including community clinics, faith-based groups, and businesses — all with a lens of humility. 

• Access: Increasing access to affordable and convenient health care through community-based screenings and targeted outreach based on data-driven insights. This includes addressing access to care through initiatives like Community Centered Impact, which uses community-led mobile services to deliver comprehensive preventive health services to under-resourced populations, reducing the prevalence and progression of chronic conditions. The First Steps and Beyond (FSB) program partners with the community to improve health care access for mothers and birthing people in Allegheny County, reducing infant mortality and prematurity. Focusing on the groups with the greatest barriers benefits all communities.

• Education: Educating clinicians and other team members about how to provide a personalized experience and providing health education to community members to help them understand their health risks and make informed choices.

• Purpose: Embedding Highmark Health's core behaviors into policies, practices, and procedures to ensure excellent care for all members, patients, and staff, both now and in the future.

• Welcoming: Creating a welcoming environment where everyone feels valued and respected. This includes ensuring accessibility for all, expanding services, implementing culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS), and promoting health literacy.

S2W has driven measurable impact in 2024 as detailed below:

Advancing proactive engagement and upstream interventions

• First Steps and Beyond: Engaged over 9,100 families, provided over 750 clinicians in Allegheny County with training on obstetric care, and in close collaboration with the Allegheny Health Network Women's Institute, worked to decrease infant mortality and improve maternal health outcomes among local patient populations.
• Community Screenings: Administered over 6,500 screenings for cancer, echocardiogram, and biometrics in under-resourced communities.
• Proactive Engagement: Reached over 12,000 participants through 167 health screenings and education events.

Fostering a culture of excellence

• Business Resource Groups (BRGs): Increased voluntary team member participation by 72% since 2021, with over 7% of the workforce now actively involved in 10 BRGs, and launched two new Individual Resource Groups (IRGs).
• Clinical Workforce Development: Increased residency participation and launched the inaugural Young Scholars Program, engaging 10 rising 8th graders.
• Talent Attraction: Recruited 10 clinicians through the Talent Attraction Program Pittsburgh to further advance health access.
• Policy Adoption: Adopted 12 policies and practices aligned with CLAS standards, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.

As an integrated health care company, Highmark Health's efforts to become a more sustainable company align with its corporate values. The organization strives to improve the health of the communities it serves and manage the assets that have been entrusted to its care, which drives the realization of its corporate mission.

Highmark Health's overarching sustainability principles include:

• Reducing energy use and conserving water throughout facilities.
• Renovating, constructing, operating, and maintaining facilities in accordance with green and high-performance building practices.
• As one of the most widely used green building rating systems in the world, the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating is a transformative tool that ensures a building is designed and operated to achieve high performance, improve human health, and protect the environment. Highlights of LEED-certified facilities include:
• AHN Wexford, a Highmark Health affiliate, and one of AHN's newest full-service hospitals, was awarded LEED in 2023.
• Highmark West Virginia Inc. headquarters in Parkersburg, WV, was awarded LEED for New Construction in 2009. It was one of the first LEED-certified facilities in West Virginia.
• Highmark Health data center was awarded LEED for New Construction in 2005. It was one of the first two data centers certified in the country.
• In 2021, Highmark Health achieved the WELL Health-Safety Rating for its largest facilities for 2.4 million square feet of its non-clinical real estate. This includes the corporate headquarters and data center. This rating is renewed annually and was achieved for 2024. The WELL Health-Safety Rating is an evidence-based, third-party verified rating for all new and existing building and space types focusing on operational policies, maintenance protocols, stakeholder engagement, and emergency plans to address acute health threats.
• Reducing, reusing, and recovering waste streams to convert them to valuable resources, thereby minimizing the amount sent to landfills.
• Donating over 150 tons of surplus office furniture and supplies to area nonprofits such as Global Links since 2017. Additionally, AHN maintains a medical supplies surplus donation program with local community organizations focused on performing charity work and mission trips to benefit global health, education, infrastructure, and disaster relief efforts.