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| Home > About Aetna > Corporate Responsibility |
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Aetna Corporate Responsibility
Aetna’s focus on corporate responsibility is evident in everything we do, from adherence to strict ethical guidelines and corporate governance standards to longstanding support of the communities where we do business. We have a clear track record for social responsibility that starts with our member-focused mission statement and set of values and culminates in responsible business policies and practices. It is a record the speaks directly to the priorities of many firms today that want and expect to do business with socially responsible companies.
Aetna Community Involvement
Nothing speaks to our commitment to responsible leadership more visibly and resolutely than the activities of our independent charitable and philanthropic arm, the Aetna Foundation. Founded in 1972, the Foundation seeks to help build healthy communities by funding initiatives that improve the quality of life where our employees and customers work and live. Since 1980, the Aetna Foundation has contributed more than $270 million in grants, scholarships and social investments.
In 2004, Aetna and the Aetna Foundation contributed approximately $17.5 million nationally, with nearly $4.5 million directed at entities in Connecticut, Aetna’s home state for more than 150 years. The Foundation’s giving focuses on health, particularly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care, and supporting diversity and volunteerism.
Aetna’s commitment to healthy communities is demonstrated through:
Diversity at Aetna
At Aetna, diversity is a core business value and an integral part of our culture. Valuing diversity helps to ensure we have an engaged, innovative workforce that is doing the right things for the right reasons and providing quality, value and service for our constituents.
We are committed to serving the needs of an increasingly diverse population. Our challenge is to take what we know about the changing marketplace and leverage that knowledge in all aspects of our business: product development, marketing and sales, underwriting, patient management and customer service. This is where diversity and health care come together. Diversity is not only the right thing to do; it is also very good business.
Aetna Office of Diversity Priorities:
- Recognizing diversity as an organizational initiative in increasing our business opportunities and partnerships with multicultural markets, suppliers, consumers and the communities we serve.
- Building a diverse workforce focusing on recruitment, development and advancement of talent at all levels of the organization.
- Creating an inclusive workplace that fosters full employee engagement, so our people do their best work in providing quality service and value.
- Providing enterprise-wide diversity education integrated into executive, supervisory and employee learning, as well as enhancing cultural competency for Sales, Patient Management and Customer Service areas.
- Partnering with the Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care Task Force, which works to reduce disparities in health care by providing tailored support for our members and leveraging the Aetna Foundation’s research funding.
We continue to integrate our diversity initiatives into all aspects of how we conduct business, develop and engage our workforce, and sustain external relationships to promote market growth and attract talent.
Public Policy Issues
Even as we focus on delivering value in an ever-changing marketplace, Aetna also is committed to improving the overall health care system in America. In recent years, we have sought to shed light on important problems, such as
racial and ethnic disparities,
end-of-life care,
the uninsured and other serious
health care issues facing the nation. We are committed to a discourse, bringing together different perspectives and competing points of view, in order to hasten workable solutions to challenging problems affecting access, quality and the affordability of care.
We will remain steadfast in pursuit of these goals.
Corporate Governance
Aetna's reputation is one of the company's most valuable assets. We have earned this reputation over the course of 152 years by delivering quality products and services, and by adhering to the highest standards of business conduct. These standards include sound corporate governance policies to address the interests of our constituents.
An important principle of good governance is transparency. Aetna, therefore, makes its key corporate governance policies and practices publicly available online. The corporate governance pages contain key information about Aetna's corporate governance in one simple, clear and easy-to-navigate location.
Those policies provide a framework for governance of the company consistent with shareholder and other constituent interests, and with the principles behind the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the New York Stock Exchange's corporate governance rules. We believe that sharing our corporate governance principles with all of our key stakeholders will help ensure that our commitment to excellence, integrity and accountability is apparent to all.
Environmental Concerns
Aetna is a charter member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise program (founded in 1994). Under this program, members commit to achieving waste reductions through a combination of prevention and recycling. Having achieved our initial goals, we now are an alumni member.
In each year we have been a member of this program, significant volumes of waste have been prevented and recycled. During 2004, for example, our Connecticut locations recycled 256,000 pounds of corrugated cardboard and 1.5 million pounds of paper.
Our environmental leadership and program achievements have been highlighted in several USEPA WasteWise publications. For example, the December 1997 edition of the “WasteWise Update” highlighted our effort to “close the loop” by purchasing bathroom paper products, such as paper towels, manufactured with paper generated by our operations and then recycled.
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Corporate Responsibility
(PDF: 513 KB / 22 pages)
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