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The folks over at CVS Pharmacy aren’t so busy filling prescriptions that they don’t have time to get in their charitable work. With their CVS Caremark All Kids Can program, they have committed more than $2 million in 2006 and 2007 to Boundless Playgrounds, offering children of all abilities accessible places nationwide to play and frolic. CVS’s charitable trust also writes big checks to schools and non-profit organizations that serve children with disabilities. In 2008, they joined forces with Very Special Arts to underwrite the cost of placing artists-in-residence at schools nationwide, adding a bold splash of color to an area of education that had become terribly faded in recent years. And that’s just for starters…

Recently, Chet Cooper, ABILITY’s editor-in-chief, sat down with Eileen Howard Dunn, vice president of corporate communications and community relations for CVS, to chat about this Rhode Island-based corporation, its 190,000 employees across 40 states, and why they do the things they do.

Chet Cooper: How did children with disabilities become your focus?

Eileen Howard Dunn: It was always clear to us that we could make a difference in the lives of children, especially those with disabilities. We said, “OK, where do we want to focus?” Children with disabilities is a very broad area. Ultimately, we settled on programs, such as Easter Seals, that would help them learn, play and succeed.

Learn means helping kids be the very best they can be. For example, it might mean giving them adaptive technologies in school to enhance learning in the best way possible. For the play component, we would build playgrounds. Finally, for the succeed component, we provide medical rehabilitation and related services to children with disabilities.

Cooper: How did you go after your goals to help children learn, play and succeed?

Howard Dunn: In part through our partnerships, where we reach out to kids and their families. We call one of our programs All Kids Can, which emphasizes one of our main themes: inclusion. It’s not just for children with disabilities, it also makes an impact on typically developed children as well, so they, too, can see that there are no barriers, that every child has an opportunity to succeed and have fun.

We developed accessible playgrounds where everyone—including a child with a walker or a wheelchair—can get to the top of the play structure, because that’s what life’s all about. We engage our national, regional and local partners, and our employees to drive awareness to these issues. When a company such as ours helps Easter Seals or Special Olympics, for instance, they benefit and we benefit.

Cooper: Is there some way to measure the impact of all these intangibles?

Howard Dunn: Absolutely. We have criteria to measure results to determine if it’s a good program or not. What we do is ask the affiliates to come up with the programs, each of which goes through a whole granting process. They ask, “What demographic are we serving? How many people will we impact? At what level?” The specifics. And then there’s a review process. My hope is that at the end of five years we’ll be able to say, “We affected this many people’s lives.” Already there are probably hundreds or perhaps thousands of stories of people whose lives we’ve touched without our even knowing it.

At one of our annual sales meetings for All Kids Can, the wife of one of our regional managers in the Indianapolis market told a story about one of the mothers she’d met. The woman was single with three children, two of whom are autistic. Both boys went to a camp that we sponsored. The boys’ mother said that it was a wonderful summer for her because she had a rare chance to decompress. We thought the story was even better because we didn’t solicit it.

JANUARY 2009 FEATURED ARTICLE