Merck's Social Impact & Sustainability Efforts

We have representation goals to increase senior management roles for women, and Black/African American and Hispanic/ Latino leaders by 2024. They are:

• Women globally to 40%, up from 31% in 2020.

• Black/African Americans in the U.S. to 10%, up from 3% in 2020.

• Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. to 10%, up from 5 % in 2020.

We exceeded our corporate goal of spending at least $2 billion with minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, LGBT-owned and disability-owned business enterprises. This is our 35th year pursuing goods and services from diverse suppliers through our Supplier Diversity & Inclusion program.

• 100% renewable sources for our purchased electricity by 2025
• Carbon neutrality across our operations by 2025 (Scopes 1 & 2 GHG emissions)
• 30% reduction in value chain (Scope 3) emissions by 2030

In addition to reducing our water use by 14 percent from our 2015 baseline, we achieved our goal of developing water conservation plans for sites in “high water risk” locations by 2020. Lastly, we are on track with our 2025 supplier goal, as 45 percent of high-impact suppliers have water use reduction targets. Our goal is at least 90 percent of these suppliers will have water use reduction targets by 2025.

In April 2021, Merck announced ambitious goals to achieve carbon neutrality across its operations by 2025 (Scopes 1 & 2 emissions) and a 30% reduction in its value chain emissions by 2030 (Scope 3 emissions).¹

These goals are aligned with science and build on Merck’s long-standing focus on preventing the worst impacts of climate change and supporting the global effort to achieve the Paris Agreement goals by reducing demand for energy and minimizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

• Further advance health equity by reaching 30 million people in low- and middle-income countries and in U.S. underserved populations with our social investments, by 2025.

• Reach at least 75% of countries around the world annually with our products.

• Enable 100 million more people to access our innovative portfolio globally, through access strategies, solutions and partnerships, by 2025.

Since 1957, we have contributed nearly $1 billion to support programs that address important global health and societal needs. Through July 2021, our company contributed or committed more than $49 million (cash and in-kind) in support of global, national and local COVID-19 response efforts, part of which includes helping to address the needs of vulnerable patient populations and communities most impacted by the pandemic.

The MECTIZAN Donation Program (MDP) is the longest-running drug donation program and partnership of its kind. The program works with partners to achieve a future free of onchocerciasis (river blindness)— one of the leading causes of preventable blindness worldwide—and lymphatic filariasis (LF or elephantiasis), both of which are on the World Health Organization (WHO)’s list of prioritized neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Widely regarded as one of the most successful public-private health collaborations in the world, the MDP has influenced the development of a number of other drug donation programs and highlights our commitment to donate MECTIZAN® (ivermectin)for the treatment of onchocerciasis to all who need it, for as long as needed.

We have donated 4.4 billion MECTIZAN treatments since the program launched in 1987, and there are now more than 15 million people globally who no longer need treatment for river blindness thanks to community-level efforts.

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), in the U.K., Northern Ireland and the U.S., the risk for infection was twice as high for Black people and 1.5 times as high for Asian people than white people.

“I often remind people that COVID-19 did not create any of the inequities that we’ve seen, but it did take advantage of them,” said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the director at Equity Research and Innovation Center at Yale School of Medicine.

Nunez-Smith, as well as Dr. Aletha Maybank, chief health equity officer and senior vice president of the American Medical Association, recently joined Merck’s Dr. Mary-Ann Etiebet, assistant vice president for health equity, for Episode 4 of our Teal Talks series to discuss health equity: what it is, how we work towards it, and what it means to achieve it

Strengthening health systems and building capacity are important to improve access to quality health care.

Advancing sustainable global health systems

Impact investing is one of our core approaches to advancing sustainable global health systems. Through impact investing, we are able to deploy financial resources in ways that may generate not only improved access to health care for underserved populations, but also financial returns and commercial opportunities—all while growing a sustainable global health ecosystem and attracting additional capital and partners.

In our impact investing portfolio we seek to address five complementary facets of a sustainable and resilient global health ecosystem: physical infrastructure, financial inclusion, digital and diagnostic solutions, pharmaceutical and vaccine R&D, and emergency response.