By Susan Stith, vice president of diversity, equity, inclusion, and charitable giving at Cigna, and president of the Cigna Foundation

Through our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, Cigna aims to advance an inclusive culture that is powerfully diverse, strives for equity, and values the unique differences and talents we each bring in service to our mission: to improve the health, well-being, and peace of mind of those we serve.

We believe DEI must be embraced, embedded, and championed across our company – and that thinking was the driving force behind our creation of the Building Equity and Equality Program (BEEP) in July 2020. The program is Cigna’s five-year initiative to expand and accelerate our efforts to support diversity, equity and inclusion for communities of color. As part of those efforts, we’ve increased our transparency through an annual Diversity Scorecard Report. 

Below we look at some of the programs and initiatives from 2021 that we are most proud of across these three important areas.

Colleagues: Supporting Cigna Employees in Respecting Differences

• We continue to make progress on our fair pay commitment, and earlier this year, we began publishing market ranges for each role in the company.
• 96% of our external requisitions for manager level and above positions had a diverse slate, helping us to increase the number of women and ethnic minorities in the company.
• We are working to improve our ethnic minority representation, and we aspire to reach gender parity in our leadership pipeline by increasing the representation of women at our director and senior director levels to 50% by the end of 2024.

Clinical: Tackling Disparities in Health Outcomes

• Our Coverage Policy Unit (CPU) has adopted guiding principles to align health equity to our medical coverage policies; and the unit is expected to review 100% of Cigna’s medical coverage policies through 2022 to ensure equitable health practices and opportunities for those covered.
• We are integrating health equity and SDOH into our value-based provider reimbursement models.
• We leveraged our proprietary Social Determinant Index (SDI) to increase case management engagement through more tailored messaging to our customers residing in areas with high SDOH. The evaluation found that the groups residing in these areas had a higher relative case management engagement rate compared to those who consumed more generic messaging.
• We launched a virtual health literacy campaign to educate customers about access to care.
• The Cigna Foundation awarded over $12.5 million across 142 grants in 2021, some of which supported advances in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Communities: Making an Impact in the Communities We Serve

• To help improve the pipeline of Black professionals in health care careers, Cigna donated $250,000 to the Wake Forest University School of Medicine to establish an endowed scholarship that will help support diversity and inclusion.
• Cigna provided a $250,000 donation to the Howard University Urban Superintendents Academy, which funded scholarships to help 12 educators achieve promotions. The partnership also connected with the National Alliance of Black School Educators to help create a database of Black superintendents in the United States.
• We’ve committed to $1 billion in annual spend with diverse suppliers by 2025, representing nearly 20% of our $5 billion annual spend in the United States. We’re right on track to meet our planned diverse spend target, with $764 million of diverse spend in 2021.

"At a time when our customers and clients have never needed us more to help support their health and well-being, we must be at our best, and it’s mission-critical that we rely on the power of our team strengthened by a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives."David Cordani, chairman and CEO of Cigna

“It’s at the heart of who we are as a company to treat each other with respect, provide meaningful opportunities to grow, contribute, and challenge ourselves to always get better at increasing belonging, innovation, and equity for all our Cigna co-workers and for those we serve,” Cordani added. 

View the Diversity Scorecard Report.