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When a hospital and the MassMutual Foundation aligned

Dennis Duquette

Posted on April 22, 2024

Dennis Duquette is MassMutual's head of community responsibility and president of the MassMutual Foundation.
BMC

Back in 2019, MassMutual’s chief executive officer, Roger Crandall, was enlisted to serve as co-chair of Boston Medical Center’s (BMC) annual gala. In the run-up to the springtime event, I was invited to take a tour of the hospital and meet some of the Development staff. Having lived in Boston’s South End for many years, I was quite familiar with BMC’s reputation as a leading safety-net hospital and one of the region’s busiest Level 1 trauma centers. I approached the visit as somewhat of a perfunctory exercise in good corporate community relations. What I was not prepared for, however, was to stumble upon an organization so aligned with the work of the MassMutual Foundation.

As I toured the hospital, it became obvious that BMC encountered the same community dynamics and challenges evident in our newly launched (at the time) Live Mutual Project. To that end, the hospital was in the process of coalescing many of the solutions into what would become its Health Equity Accelerator, a program designed to directly address the impediments preventing many community members from achieving and maintaining their health and well-being in a sustainable way.

And just like that, a partnership was born — the MassMutual Foundation became one of the initial funders of the Health Equity Accelerator at BMC and has worked closely with the hospital ever since.

Most recently, the Foundation has partnered with BMC to expand its Health Equity Accelerator program through the establishment of its Economic Justice Hub. The Economic Justice Hub strives to improve financial well-being for BMC’s patients in recognition of the correlation between financial stability/well-being and improved health outcomes.

The transformative nature of this work recently caught the attention of the WHO Foundation, who asked to profile these efforts in a short film as part of its digital film series “Healthier Together: A path to a better world.” We are honored to be part of this series, presented by WHO Foundation and produced for them by BBC StoryWorks Commercial Productions.

Learn more about BMC’s incredible work and watch the film here.

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The information provided is not written or intended as specific tax or legal advice. MassMutual, its employees and representatives are not authorized to give tax or legal advice. You are encouraged to seek advice from your own tax or legal counsel. Opinions expressed by those interviewed are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.