Please note that today's meeting may include forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, the company's future financial performance, product development, market position, and business strategy. You're cautioned not to rely on these statements, which are based on current expectations of future events using the information available as of today's date, and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected. In particular, there is significant uncertainty about the duration and contemplated impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. A further description of these risks, uncertainties, and other factors can be found in our SEC filings, including our 2020 Form 10-K and most recently filed Form 10-Q, which is available at investor.jnj.com and on the SEC's website.
Hello, this is Chris DelOrefice, Vice President of Investor Relations. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our annual ESG Investor Update. I'm hoping you've had the opportunity to review the content that was posted to our website yesterday, including the conversation on ESG perspectives between Anne Mulcahy, Johnson & Johnson's Lead Independent Director of our Board of Directors, and Joseph Wolk, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We are confident you will find their discussion insightful. If you haven't yet reviewed the materials, I certainly encourage you to do so. This content includes new areas across many functions within the business that many of you have expressed interest in. Leaders from across the business provided updates on the progress we made in 2020, as well as, where applicable, the background related to the 2025 Health for Humanity goals.
The content areas included yesterday are product quality, presented by Carol Montandon, Chief Quality Officer. Patient safety, presented by Joanne Waldstreicher, Chief Medical Officer. Ethics and healthcare compliance, presented by Dirk Brinckman, Chief Compliance Officer. Supplier sustainability, presented by Len DeCandia, Chief Procurement Officer. Cybersecurity, presented by Marene Allison, Chief Information Security Officer, and environmental sustainability, presented by Paulette Frank, Chief Sustainability Officer. We offer this forum to provide you with updates on all aspects of our ESG efforts, including progress against our goals and our approach to ESG. For additional reference, I also direct you to our 2020 Health for Humanity report, published earlier this month. It provides more details about our ESG priorities, including our goals. This report is available on our website at investor.jnj.com.
To begin today, you will hear how organizations across J&J leverage their strong capabilities and processes to make a difference, highlighting that Johnson & Johnson has, and aspires to continue, to change the trajectory of Health for Humanity. You will also hear from leaders about their approach and the governance related to each topic area across our broad-based business. We think you will find all the content provided yesterday and today, along with our 2020 Health for Humanity report, as valuable information in evaluating Johnson & Johnson's ESG efforts. Turning to today's agenda. On today's webcast, we have several Johnson & Johnson leaders representing a variety of perspectives on topics that are of highest interest to our stakeholders. We believe that by focusing on these areas, we can appropriately invest our resources to achieve the greatest impact.
These high-priority areas are based on the outcome of our updated 2020 priority topics assessment that Matthew Orlando, Worldwide Vice President, Corporate Governance and Corporate Secretary, will discuss among other ESG management topics next in the program. Matt recently assumed the additional responsibility for overseeing the enterprise ESG program office that leads our efforts related to ESG reporting, including the Health for Humanity report. Following Matt on the webcast today, you will hear from Peter Fasolo, Executive Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer, and member of our executive committee, to provide his perspectives on human capital. Wanda Hope, our Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, will provide an update on our vision, strategy, and efforts on this important topic.
Our final speaker will be Martin Fitchet, the Global Head of our Global Public Health organization, to highlight our accomplishments and approach to this impactful area to underserved patients in key disease areas around the world. We will end today's call with a Q&A session. Throughout the presentations, you have the opportunity to submit additional questions from your viewing device. A few logistics before we get into the details. We anticipate today's webcast to last approximately 60 minutes. Additionally, some products and compounds discussed today are being developed in collaboration with strategic partners or licensed from other companies. This slide acknowledges those relationships. I will now turn the webcast over to Matt.
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity to share with you more detail about our ESG management approach and our Health for Humanity goals, both those we have achieved as well as the new ones we have set for 2025. As the world's largest healthcare company, Johnson & Johnson has a unique ability to apply its expertise and partnering power to advance progress on some of the most difficult global health challenges. As you heard from Anne Mulcahy and Joe Wolk in the content we posted last night, we believe that sound ESG practices drive financial value creation by building stakeholder trust, driving innovation, mitigating risk, fostering employee engagement, increasing productivity, and reducing costs. Our ESG management approach is designed to effectively govern and manage the ESG risks and opportunities that arise from our core business strategy.
This approach includes five components: purpose, ESG strategy, targets and KPIs, risk management, governance and disclosure. We have made great progress in a number of areas to enhance this approach. The Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Governance Council, or EGC, serves as the primary governance body overseeing ESG topics and supporting the implementation of the company's enterprise risk management framework. The EGC is comprised of senior leaders who represent our pharmaceutical, medical devices, and consumer health business segments, and our global enterprise functions with oversight of these priority issues. In 2020, the EGC, among other things, formalized an ESG training program for EGC members and their teams, oversaw the process for setting our Health for Humanity 2025 goals, and supported and oversaw our 2020 priority topics assessment update. We have been conducting PTAs every two or three years since 2008. The results help inform our ESG priorities and reporting.
In those areas where we believe we can achieve the greatest impact, we set goals and annually report our progress with independent assurance validation. While our most recent independent priority topic assessment was conducted in 2019, we conducted an interim PTA update in 2020 to better understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social and racial injustice on stakeholder perceptions regarding Johnson & Johnson's ESG priorities. The changes would generally align with our expectations, as evidenced by increases in importance of 13 topics, with the largest increases for diversity, equity, and inclusion, strengthening health systems, and access. Later in our program, you will hear from Wanda Hope, Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, and Martin Fitchet, head of Global Public Health, on these topics. One area of concern that we've heard from investors, and it is also a challenge for companies beyond ours, relates to litigation.
We want to stress that investors should not conflate the litigation environment in the United States with the safety and quality of our products. As a point of reference, more than 2/3 of the civil actions in the U.S. Federal court system are product liability claims, mainly against healthcare companies, at a time when safety and quality standards have never been higher. Jury verdicts are not medical, scientific, or regulatory conclusions about the company's products, and jurors can sometimes decide cases based on emotions and sympathies rather than fact. To hear more regarding our robust quality systems and standards that have driven significant improvements, please view the presentation posted last night from our Chief Quality Officer, Carol Montandon.
Overall, these PTA findings were taken into consideration when reviewing our new ESG policies and positions, and we added three new positions in response, including our comprehensive internal and external innovation approach, how we advance stronger and more resilient health systems, and our approach to ensuring business continuity. We also looked to these insights as we finalized our Health for Humanity 2025 goals and prepared our 2020 Health for Humanity report. We set our Health for Humanity goals every five years. As we outlined in our recently published report, we had successfully delivered upon our Health for Humanity 2020 goals as of the end of last year, achieving significant progress in advancing better health for all, environmental stewardship, and responsible business practices across our extended value chain.
We have once again committed to an ambitious set of new goals for 2025, which build upon our past success and continue to accelerate our efforts in the areas where we can deliver the most impact. We have established a total of 21 goals, each one with specific key performance metrics attached to them. Our goals also actively contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our goals fall within five focus areas. First, aiming to address two of the most fundamental current health challenges, pandemics and epidemics, and global health equity. At the same time, we are also continuing to focus on our people, our planet, and our partners, and some specific goals you have heard or will hear from the other presenters.
Through our Health for Humanity 2025 goals, we are building on Johnson & Johnson's long legacy of setting and achieving corporate citizenship and sustainability goals and pushing ourselves to act where we believe we can have the greatest impact. To see the powerful progress that can be driven by setting ambitious goals, you only need to look at our Health for Humanity report. This year's report features new content and metrics. We've highlighted the company's overall pandemic response in 2020 and our Our Race to Health Equity initiative, added supplier diversity spend categories, and continued to shorten the length of the report as a direct response to stakeholder feedback. In 2020, we achieved or exceeded 16 of the 17 targets across the goal focus areas of providing people with better health access and care using fewer and smarter resources, and partnering to create a culture of health and wellbeing.
Additionally, we exceeded four of the five targets of our United Nations Sustainable Development Goals commitments across the aspirations of healthy workforce, essential surgery, global disease challenges, and environmental health. Further details can be found in the scorecards included in the report. Though our Health for Humanity report is our main channel, we have a very robust and broad continuum of disclosure, inclusive of both mandatory financial reporting and voluntary ESG reporting. We continue to innovate to deliver life-changing healthcare solutions to more people around the world. As new health challenges arise and new inequities come to light, Johnson & Johnson will be ready to leverage our breadth, scale, and partnering power to meet the needs of the moment. Now I'll turn it over to Peter Fasolo, Chief Human Resources Officer, who will discuss our approach to human capital.
Thank you, Matt. Good morning. I'm Peter Fasolo, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Johnson & Johnson. I am here today to speak with you about how our Health for Humanity translates to our employees. Our employees are critical to Johnson & Johnson's continued success and are an essential element for our long-term strategy. Our human capital strategy is built on three fundamental focus areas: attracting and recruiting the best and most diverse talent, developing and retaining that talent through a broad array of learning and development experiences, and empowering and inspiring our people through innovative engagement initiatives and programs. Underpinning these focus areas are ongoing efforts to cultivate and foster a culture built on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which Wanda Hope will discuss in further detail during her presentation, as well as on innovation, health, wellbeing, and safety.
2020 was a year that tested us all, but our people persevered. Every decision made at Johnson & Johnson is rooted in our Credo. Since our founding, the values and principles outlined have defined our responsibility to our employees, unified us around the world, shaped our culture, and importantly, provided the basis for how we hold ourselves accountable as leaders, colleagues, and individuals across Johnson & Johnson and to the patients, customers, and consumers we serve. Every one of us at Johnson & Johnson plays a role in bringing these values to life. In 2020 especially, our Credo was visible across the world through the daily actions of our employees. In fact, our Credo is so deeply held by our leaders and employees alike that we conduct a biannual Credo survey to serve as a barometer for how we are living out its values and principles.
I'm proud to share that in the 2020 survey, we secured a 93% participation rate, which was a 3% increase from 2018, and an 89% favorability rate, which was a 4% increase from 2018 on a like-to-like question basis. Our investment in employee health, wellbeing, and safety is built on our conviction that advancing Health for Humanity starts with advancing the health of our employees. When the pandemic hit, our teams acted quickly and strategically to adapt to meet the needs of our employees. First, as situations changed daily, it was essential that we have in place the right vehicles to deliver information to our colleagues. We established several communications channels to inform employees of the situation in their region, receive guidance on our company's approach, and ask questions 24/7.
These channels included a J&J Response intranet page with COVID-19 resources and newsletters, a bank of FAQs related to all aspects of COVID-19, a 24/7 hotline in local languages for questions, and weekly employee sentiment surveys to collect employee feedback, among others, and existing team communications. As the pandemic spread across the world, we transitioned nearly 2/3 of our workforce to remote working, providing employees with equipment and connectivity to work effectively from home and with guidance and tools to leverage flexible work arrangements. Our comprehensive return to the workplace phased approach represents a gradual expansion of the workplace. Many of our offices and facilities around the world are now welcoming back employees. We hope to gradually reach unrestricted workplace and operations as this year continues. For our on-site superheroes, our essential frontline workers, we implemented safety measures to protect our colleagues.
These measures include physical distancing in the workplace, enhanced cleaning and hand sanitizing stations, furniture reconfiguration, temperature screening, and symptom questionnaires aligned with government recommendations, among others. We also established a workforce vaccination task force to enable our workforce and their families to gain efficient access to and information about COVID-19 vaccines through a coordinated, appropriate, and informed approach. During the pandemic, our objective was not only to protect the safety of our employees, but also to help them navigate the impacts of the pandemic on their professional and personal responsibilities. We offered nine weeks of base salary and benefits for those unable to work remotely during the pandemic. We closed our facilities company-wide for two global recharge days in May and September to allow colleagues an extra day to unplug.
For those colleagues unable to take off on that particular day, alternative arrangements were made to take off at another time. We expanded access to our digital resilience tool to support mental wellbeing. We introduced a new global medical personnel leave policy to allow medically trained employees the opportunity to take paid leave to serve or volunteer to support their communities in diagnosing, treating, and providing health support for patients with COVID-19. Nearly 40 medically trained employees volunteered their time through this benefit. We recognized our on-site superheroes with a one-time award of approximately $1,000 that differed by country and one additional week of paid time off to celebrate these essential workers. While we introduced or expanded a variety of new benefits and policies as a result of the pandemic, our policies and culture have always provided flexibility for colleagues to balance personal and professional responsibilities.
From our global parental leave policy, which offers a minimum of eight weeks of leave for all new parents, to our retirement plan, which has the same benefits as a traditional pension plan, but with the portability for employees to take it with them after leaving the company. Our benefits are designed to meet the needs of employees at every stage of life. We continuously evaluate our offerings, and while we are committed to maintain a high global standard of benefits, we also prioritize flexibility so that we can customize to meet the needs of specific regions and markets. Rooted in our history and powered by our size and breadth, we strive to provide employees with a broad range of experiences and opportunities to make an impact both inside and outside of Johnson & Johnson.
In order to achieve this, we are putting our employees' experience front and center, delivering tools, streamlined processes, and user-centric technologies that enable productivity and development, provide deeper connection to our purpose, and ultimately empower everyone at Johnson & Johnson to be their best. Once at Johnson & Johnson, we seek to foster a learning culture where every employee can shape their own unique career path and has opportunities for ongoing development and take on new experiences. We offer a robust suite of leadership and professional development programs. For example, last year, thousands of leaders completed first-line leader and leaders developing leaders programs across more than 140 individual courses. We launched Leading People at J&J, a new six-month development program for first-time line leaders with participation from employees across all functions and business segments.
Alongside leadership development, we provide opportunities for employees to acquire new skills across a range of functions and skill areas. In 2020, 10s of thousands of employees in more than 70 countries completed programs offered through our LinkedIn Learning platform. We believe that those who move across our businesses to different roles within the organization, moving from pharmaceuticals to corporate, for example, have a higher probability of attaining the diverse experiences and skill sets that serve as major drivers of development, innovation, and growth. Despite challenging circumstances around the globe. In 2020, approximately 46% of managers and above moved across functions, country, or business segments, building the diversity of experiences. We also made strides in our aspiration to become the healthiest workforce, and I am proud to announce that we achieved our Health for Humanity 2020 Healthiest Workforce goal.
We exceeded each of our targets, including training employees in the principles of energy management to help them build their resiliency, putting better health in our employees' hands by connecting them with an ecosystem of digital health tools, and making the healthy choice the easy choice through cultures of healthy eating and healthy movement. Building upon this achievement, we are now taking the ambitious next step to further embed our culture of health into every part of our organization. Our metric for 2025 is a first of its kind company metric to measure our progress as we continue to advance our ambition to become the healthiest workforce. It mobilizes all levers of our enterprise and holds us accountable to protect, support, and advance the total health and wellbeing of each of our employees and their families. 2021 is a benchmarking year for the Healthiest Workforce score.
While we are tracking against these key components this year, we will determine our target metrics and begin measuring leader elements in early 2022. We look forward to sharing more with you in a future meeting. The continued protection of our people and investment in their health and wellbeing throughout the pandemic further solidified the foundational elements of our human capital strategy, ensuring our employees are empowered and inspired to proactively champion and advance their total health and wellbeing. Supporting overall health and wellbeing for our employees and their families continues to be a top priority for Johnson & Johnson, we look forward to finding new and innovative programs and policies as we continue our work to become the healthiest workforce. From Fortune's Most Admired Companies to Forbes Best Employers for Diversity and Women, we're incredibly proud to be recognized as a leader across our areas of focus.
Thank you for joining us today. I hope this has been informative to hear about our human capital strategy, pandemic response, engagement with our employees, and culture. I will now turn the webcast over to Wanda Hope, who will go over our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy in greater detail.
Hello, I'm Wanda Hope, I'm the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer of Johnson & Johnson. For more than 130 years, the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, have been a part of our cultural fabric at Johnson & Johnson woven into how we do business every day. In fact, DEI is embedded into our credo, which outlines our responsibilities to our patients, customers, employees, communities, and shareholders. As the Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, I'm responsible for the development and integration of our DEI global strategy. I report directly to Alex Gorsky, our Chairman and CEO, Peter Fasolo, our Chief Human Resources Officer. Alex and the members of our executive committee set a consistent direction. They review DEI results quarterly, progress is reported to the board of directors at least twice annually.
DEI is embedded into our global processes, policies, programs, and business strategies to better serve the needs of our patients, customers, employees, and communities. The past 18 months have fueled a global awareness of the racial and social inequities that persist in the U.S. and around the world. We know that society is demanding more from us as an organization, including greater accountability and transparency to accelerate DEI outcomes. We have a responsibility to meet this moment and drive change within J&J and around the world. Our strong foundation in diversity, equity, and inclusion has made it possible for us to lean in and take bold actions to drive sustainable change. Today, I want to review our global strategic plan and share highlights of our DEI journey this year. We approach DEI as a business imperative. We use data and insights to drive accountability and deliver on business outcomes.
By bringing together people with different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences, we fuel our creativity, innovation, and growth. Our global DEI strategy is built around three pillars: advancing our culture of inclusion and belonging, building a diverse workforce for the future through more equitable processes and systems, and connecting DEI to our businesses to drive innovation and growth. This strategic approach helps J&J to live into our DEI vision, "Be yourself. Change the world," and our mission to make diversity, equity, and inclusion how we work every day. Over the past year, we have expanded our accountability to strengthen our culture of inclusion and continue building a diverse workforce which reflects the communities we serve. We hold ourselves accountable by measuring our progress in DEI in several ways, including representation data, employee surveys, interviews and focus groups, and external benchmarking.
Additionally, while our senior leaders have always had DEI goals, this year we've expanded that accountability to all 25,000 people leaders around the world. These DEI goals are helping to advance diverse representation and build more inclusive teams. People leaders are supported by comprehensive resources designed to reinforce the right behaviors to drive measurable DEI outcomes. We are advancing our culture of inclusion through building inclusive leadership competencies, educating on cultural differences, and providing tools and resources to enable empathetic conversations. We make sure that the voices and perspectives of all of our employees are heard around the decision-making table. For example, through the Raise Our Voices global dialogue sessions held throughout 2020, employees told us they want leaders who take visible, tangible, and impactful actions to create a more inclusive culture where everyone belongs and can contribute.
We've taken action on these learnings by launching a cultural immersion program called The Black Experience, and a conscious inclusion workshop to educate our leaders and help them take purposeful actions to enhance our culture of belonging. Additionally, through Our Race to Health Equity, Johnson & Johnson committed $100 million over the next five years to promote health equity solutions for Black people and other communities of color in the United States. Through this initiative, we aim to help close the health disparity gap by deploying our resources and expertise to provide equitable healthcare solutions for communities of color. To be even more transparent about our DEI outcomes, we've publicly reported and published data in our Health for Humanity report for the last 10 years, and hold ourselves accountable through our five-year Health for Humanity 2025 goals, focused on advancing a global diverse employee population.
In addition, our annual You Belong: DEI Impact Review spotlights our DEI journey and shares stories of how we live into DEI every day. I'd like to share a few data points highlighted in the 2020 Health for Humanity report, showing progress over 2019. While 2020 was a challenging year, we continued to show progress of diverse representation. Globally, we've improved our representation of women by 0.3%. Today, our global workforce is 48.1% women. Women now hold 46% of management roles and represent 52% of new hires. Increases were seen across all four regions and across all three job categories that we report on, with vice president showing the greatest increase of 1.1%. In the U.S., we improved our ethnic and racial diversity by 0.3% in all job categories. Our strongest gains were at the manager and director levels.
We increased Asian managers and directors by 0.6%, Black African American managers and directors by 0.4%, and Hispanic managers and directors increased by 0.3%. While we are encouraged by this progress, we know there is more work to be done to increase the diversity of our workforce. As we continue our DEI journey, we have committed to three DEI Health for Humanity 2025 goals focused on growing diverse teams. Globally, we are committing to achieve 50% of women in management positions. In the U.S., we look to achieve 35% racial and ethnic diversity in management positions, and 50% growth of our Black African American talent in management positions. Our broad and comprehensive DEI strategy that I've shared with you will help us to achieve these goals. In closing, we know there is more to do to successfully navigate today's rapidly changing environment.
We are focused on our three strategic priorities, advancing our culture of inclusion and belonging, building a diverse workforce for the future through more equitable processes and systems, and connecting DEI to our businesses to drive innovation and growth. We know it's critical to drive increased accountability and transparency to achieve our DEI vision, where every employee can be themselves and change the world. Thank you. Now I'll turn the webcast over to Martin Fitchet.
Thank you, Wanda. Hello, my name is Dr. Martin Fitchet, I have a privilege of leading our dedicated global public health organization within Johnson & Johnson. I'm pleased to be with you today to speak about our company's unwavering commitment to taking on some of the greatest health challenges facing humanity. As the largest healthcare company in the world, we have an opportunity and a duty to impact the health of people everywhere. This is especially relevant today as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to lay bare and exacerbate the disparities both between and within healthcare systems worldwide. Access to quality healthcare and medicines is challenging for hundreds of millions of people living in low- and middle-income countries around the world. These populations are equally underserved by science to address the diseases that impact them most.
As we saw with Ebola in 2014, and what we are witnessing right now with COVID-19 in India, Brazil, and other countries, pandemics will remain existential threats and will wield a disproportionate burden on vulnerable populations. However, the increasing threat of COVID-19 pales in comparison to the future impact of antimicrobial resistance, which may mean that even the most basic infection or routine surgery today becomes life-threatening. Given these pressing global health challenges, Johnson & Johnson is working to not only develop innovative solutions to address unmet needs, but also to enable access to these solutions, as well as tackle challenges that are unique to Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
Thanks to more than 100 years of experience combating public health threats, and the application of a lab to last mile approach for more than two decades, and the launch of a dedicated Global Public Health organization to steer these efforts, we have been able to have a profound impact on the lives of children impacted by intestinal worms, those at risk of HIV and tuberculosis, and have started to expand access to mental health care. Accelerating development and deployment of our medicines and technologies is an enterprise-wide responsibility that we approach with clear governance and accountability structure. From the highest organizational levels, including the J&J Board of Directors and Executive Committee, to our vital team members on the ground in the most unserved countries, we are united in this priority.
We have advanced, and in many cases, accelerated development and access through innovative and unique strategies, understanding that getting medicines to those who need them as quickly as possible is best ensured by proactively incorporating access provisions into late-stage clinical development programs. The foundation for our efforts is grounded in our company's access and pricing principles that drive local value by collaborating with payers and governments to offer accessible and affordable medicines, fueling sustainable innovation. In the first instance, we initiate access planning for priority diseases in low- and middle-income countries during phase II development. Mastering uncertainties of patient access in markets around the globe and guide our plans to increase the access success should it be successfully deployed and developed.
Today, 80% of J&J R&D programs which target a priority disease for low and middle-income countries, or LMICs, or address a public health need, have access plans in place according to the Access to Medicine Foundation. Because of careful advanced planning, we can faster reach vulnerable patients who may potentially benefit from our life-saving technologies. Local affordability is a particularly important consideration given that countries and healthcare systems differ in how they pay for medicines and how they make them accessible to their citizens. To enable sustainable access to medicines, we use tools such as equity-based tiered pricing and work with international funders, local government, and non-governmental organizations to achieve broad and timely access in a way which is affordable and benefits patients in need in LMICs, while continuing to uphold the value of innovation and intellectual property in all parts of the world.
I will discuss an example of this in the field of tuberculosis later in this presentation. Our commitment to vulnerable and underserved populations in LMICs is embodied through our dedicated Global Public Health, GPH, organization. Our industry-first organization combines world-class research and development, global strategy, and external affairs capabilities with local implementation and impact teams to tackle the biggest health challenges facing these communities, measuring our success in lives impacted. With 130 team members across 26 countries, we are a growing team that blends purpose and expertise from the lab to the last mile to make relevant innovations that save lives, cure patients, and prevent disease available, affordable, and accessible. Our lab to last mile approach and its corresponding impact is the single greatest way that Johnson & Johnson can contribute to society and demonstrate our global social impact.
Our achievements over several years have been able to transform what it means to be diagnosed with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, giving hope to hundreds of thousands living with HIV, and ensuring children living in countries where intestinal worms are endemic have the best chance at a healthy life. These achievements, which we have held ourselves accountable to delivering through our 2020 Health for Humanity goals, have driven extensive value for our company by delivering direct financial value with revenues generated through equity-based pricing and priority review vouchers, which enables us to continuously invest in a robust R&D pipeline focused on high-burden diseases in LMICs. A win-win for patients, investing in science, technology platforms, and infrastructure, ensuring J&J has a seat at the table to shape public policy and helping to attract the highest quality talent.
Our impact and the value we have created is thanks to a deliberate and focused strategy aimed at solving some of the most difficult global health challenges and advancing equitable access to care for everyone, everywhere. The Access to Medicine Index provides an independent evaluation of our progress, with each new index raising the bar for the industry as the global health landscape changes and expectations for our company evolve. The 2021 ATMI report reaffirmed our consistent decade-long leadership, ranking us once again as one of the top three companies in advancing access to medicines in low- and middle-income countries around the world, and the top two most consistent companies since the index was launched. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, we remain committed to addressing the needs of the world's most vulnerable and underserved populations.
We continue to invest and provide a strategic focus to ensure our medical technologies are available, affordable, and accessible, and protect the hard-won health gains constantly pressured by exogenous threats and stubborn obstacles to deliver effective care. To ensure transparency regarding our access and public health activities, we hold ourselves accountable and share our progress through our annual Health for Humanity goals progress scorecard. For example, we established a unique partnership with Stop TB, USAID, and Global Fund to accelerate scale-up of bedaquiline, while our long-standing worms donation program, which introduced a new chewable formulation in 2020, has helped support more than 100 million children annually at risk of intestinal worms to thrive. This enabled us to deliver, and in most cases exceed, our 2020 Health for Humanity goals.
We never stopped putting the world's most vulnerable and underserved patients at the heart of everything we do, we're uniquely positioned to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our position is due to the fact that we have invested billions of dollars in collaboration with our partners over the course of several decades into scientific knowledge and technology platforms, allowing us not only to construct brand-new vaccines within weeks of receiving the genetic sequence, but also begin producing the vaccines at global scale. From the beginning of the pandemic, we've been clear about our strong commitment to enable global access to the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, including providing our vaccine on a not-for-profit basis for emergency pandemic use. No one is safe from COVID-19 until everyone is protected.
Our recent partnership for up to 500 million doses with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for the COVAX facility, is yet another step undertaken to ensure our single-shot vaccine is accessible to everyone, everywhere. This, alongside our agreement with the African Union's African Vaccine Acquisition Trust for up to 400 million doses, and reserve volumes for a number of other emerging economies, we expect to deliver our COVID-19 vaccine at a rate of more than one billion doses by the end of 2021, if authorized by health authorities, including those doses to low- and middle-income countries. As the global pandemic continues to devastate communities around the world, we believe a single-shot, easily transportable COVID-19 vaccine with demonstrated protection against multiple variants can protect the health and safety of people everywhere.
Recognizing the very rare side effects associated with our vaccine, involving blood clots in association with low platelet counts, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia, observed within approximately one to two weeks following the vaccination, we are collaborating with health authorities around the world to educate healthcare professionals and the public to ensure this very rare event can be identified early and treated effectively. Innovation has been the key to delivering our wide range of important breakthroughs over our 130 years as a diversified healthcare company. In times of crisis, there is opportunity. Now is our moment to seize it and deliver an incredibly exciting decade of innovation in public health. Looking to the next decade, we have established an ambitious portfolio. With our transformative outcomes, we aim to make big, bold bets in areas where we can make a significant impact.
Take, for instance, TB, which has plagued the world for 9,000 years, yet still 1.4 million people die of the disease every year. As drug resistance to TB medicines rise, we are accelerating our research to see our breakthrough medicine, bedaquiline, benefit more vulnerable populations like children. Through a set of cross-sector partnerships, we're working to modernize TB treatments to bring better, shorter, and simpler options for all TB patients. Emerging impact are areas where we advance differentiated science on an accelerated path and develop proof of concept. Next-generation science contains an umbrella of early R&D programs that will refresh our pipeline over the decade. We are further committed to convene and advocate to move the world forward faster. That's why we've signed up to $100 million investment in the AMR Action Fund, and why we support the Pandemic Action Network.
Two examples of us using our convening power and our voice to address major global health challenges. We will also invest in exciting new capabilities, leveraging the power of data sciences, technology, innovative financing, and more, to advance our emerging impact areas to become the transformative outcomes of the future. Through our capabilities, we are not only accelerating our GPH portfolio, but investing to position ourselves as a public health organization for the future. Our ultimate goal is to close the gap of inequity and pave the way to a healthier future for the world's most vulnerable and underserved populations. Through our Health for Humanity 2025 goals, we'll harness our size and scale, reach and resources, and ingenuity and innovation to take on two of the most fundamental health challenges of our time: pandemics and epidemics and global health equity.
In doing so, we will also contribute to the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Thank you for your time. I'd now like to turn this webcast back over to Chris.
Thank you, Martin, and thanks to all the speakers on the webcast today and yesterday. For today's Q&A panel, I'm joined by Matt, Wanda, and Martin from earlier this morning, along with Carol Montandon, Joanne Waldstreicher, and Paulette Frank, to answer questions that we received or have been asked during other investor engagements. We will now turn the conversation to address questions. I'll actually begin with a topic we've been asked about, and that is how does J&J consider issues that have direct implications on our reputation as a company? This is actually an important point. It's critical that our reputation among all stakeholders aligns with what we stand for as a company. We brought many things to life today and yesterday that will continue to fulfill our purpose and drive positive impacts to our reputation.
Actually, our Robust Intelligence system that measures corporate reputation recorded the highest performance of our Enterprise Reputation Index, or ERI, in the first six months of 2021 than measured in recent years. Our ERI is reported on our company scorecard and regularly reviewed and discussed by senior management and the board. We are fortunate to have a terrific board that is highly engaged in the oversight of our management initiatives across the enterprise and our reputation. Ultimately, our reputation should be an outcome of the credo-based actions we take, and this remains our core focus. Now the next question is for Carol. Carol, please describe the changes J&J has made to enhance your quality, processes, and outcomes.
Good morning. Thank you for the question, Chris. While we continually monitor our quality system performance and implement changes to enhance our outcomes, some things remain constant. It all starts with our credo. Everything we do must be of high quality. Our commitment to quality, safety, and reliability is the foundation for everything we do. We believe our patients and consumers deserve consistent, reliable, and high quality every time they use or experience a Johnson & Johnson product. We partner with health authorities, government agencies, and industry, and advocacy groups to continually raise the bar on quality across the healthcare industry. We maintain our commitment to quality through implementation of proactive measures that help ensure end-to-end quality excellence across all stages of a product lifecycle, from R&D, to manufacturing, and to commercialization.
These measures include adherence to Johnson & Johnson quality policies and quality standards, implementation of proactive quality risk management principles, monitoring of our compliance performance through audits and inspections, rigorous escalation procedures, a culture of continuous improvement, and ongoing and consistent focus on talent and enhancement of capabilities through training and education. We've also been reimagining the way we do things, leveraging emerging technologies like natural language processing, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to help us work faster and more reliably, finding the best solutions that will benefit our customers and the business while meeting evolving regulatory requirements. We are implementing digital tools to replace time-consuming tasks, freeing up our highly skilled and talented organization to focus on more value-added work. The most important thing, however, is that at Johnson & Johnson, everyone owns quality. Thanks.
Thanks, Carol. Appreciate it. Now moving on to Joanne, a question about patient safety. What patient safety learnings do you have related to your COVID-19 vaccine?
Thanks so much, Chris. Good morning, everyone. The world has never seen vaccine development at this scale and speed. The fact that we could rely on our tried-and-true processes and systems, that we had significant expertise in real-world data and epidemiology, as well as our governance structure, our functional independence, really helped us move at the scale and speed that was and is necessary for these unprecedented times. Potential safety signals need to be placed in the proper context of a structured overall benefit and risk framework so that healthcare professionals and people receiving vaccines can make well-informed decisions on both benefit and risk.
We had a framework that we had previously developed that helped guide us in our review of benefit and risk, and which we shared with the CDC advisory committee in our public presentation. We will continue to use this framework as the data continue to evolve. Using these tools, we will continue to make evidence-driven and patient-centered decisions with a good understanding as the pandemic and overall benefit risk evolve over time.
Thanks, Joanne. Appreciate it. Martin, a question for you. How are you planning to achieve your 2025 Health for Humanity preventative viral vaccine capability goal?
Thanks so much, Chris DelOrefice. Good morning, everybody. It's a very good question. If I just reiterate what our goal is, our Health for Humanity goal is to demonstrate our ability to develop and submit to a stringent regulatory authority a viral preventative vaccine within 12-18 months, by 2025. Just for some context, we set this goal in the latter half of last year when we were right in the middle of our vaccine development program. As I go back and I take a look at how we performed and achieved and got that vaccine to market in record time, it was actually 13 months from genetic sequence to approval by FDA, which is absolutely remarkable.
I think if we are in a global environment, a posture of readiness, and we observe certain learnings from the COVID pandemic, I'm very confident we can meet and even exceed that goal. Some of these key learnings include collaboration is absolutely key, scientific collaboration and transparency, as well as private-public collaboration. We're already moving in that direction with some key initiatives such as the INTREPID Alliance , such as the G7's 100 Days Mission, and also the Pandemic Action Network. Secondly, innovation is core. We must continually and sustainably innovate against vaccine technology and platform optimization, even when we're out of the pandemic. We must invest more in data sciences, which has been shown so effective at predicting where the vaccine is due to spread.
We must also continue to invest in novel regulatory and clinical trial technologies, and also work with partners around the world to drive for greater regulatory harmonization to ensure even faster emergency use authorization. Manufacturing will be key. Having a global supply network that allows for free flowing of vaccine substance and vaccine product will be critical, and also having a legal framework that is established and accepted by all, specifically no-fault compensation, which protects all recipients of vaccines. If we apply these lessons and these learnings, and also we as a world adopt a posture of constant readiness, I'm confident we'll meet, and I'm even more confident we may even exceed this 2025 Health for Humanity goal.
Terrific. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate it. Our next question is for Paulette. How is J&J approaching achievement of its climate goals?
Thank you for the question. It's a super question. We have a multi-pronged approach to achieving our climate goals. First, we'll continue to advance energy efficiency projects across our operations. We've already avoided 300,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually since the past 15 years through energy efficiency projects. Second, we'll continue to accelerate our purchase of renewable electricity. We're already over 50% renewable electricity across our operations, and our goal is to be at 100% by 2025. Third, we'll look for opportunities for renewable fuels to heat our facilities. For example, we've already completed two geothermal wells at our Janssen campus in Beerse, Belgium, that will provide hot water for that facility. Fourth, we'll continue to engage with our suppliers, particularly in specific procurement categories that are relatively more carbon intensive, such as logistics, chemicals, and packaging.
Lastly, when all other options have been vetted, we'll invest in nature-based carbon removal projects. All of this work is underpinned by continuing to be part of collaborations like the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance and the Climate Leadership Council. Based on our track record over the past couple of decades of setting and achieving our climate goals, we are confident that we will achieve this latest set of goals as well. Thank you.
Excellent. Thanks, Paulette, appreciate it. This next question is for Wanda. What is J&J doing to improve diversity, and how do you compare to your peers?
Hello, thank you for the question, Chris. To support our efforts in improving diverse representation across J&J, we are led by our evidence-based diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, or DEI. We're focused on attracting, developing, advancing, and retaining a workforce which reflects the communities we serve. To attract more candidates, we mitigate potential gender and racial bias from our job descriptions. We create diverse candidate slates and interview teams. Now, we've strengthened partnerships with diverse professional organizations, including military and veterans groups. We have advanced our broad college recruiting strategy. We work with diverse student organizations at large universities. We've deepened our strong relationships with historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and colleges that are local to our facilities. One way that we're helping to prepare future leaders is through our Bridge to Employment program.
This program has been in place for more than 25 years in underserved communities and helps to prepare students starting in the 10th grade for college. We also focus on recruiting employees from racially and ethnically diverse communities through collaborations with dozens of professional organizations. In addition, in January 2020, we created the Diverse Workforce Solutions team. This team collaborates closely with Global Talent Management and with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to reimagine our HR processes and systems and drive more equitable talent outcomes for the company. Compared to the market, we have consistently received top rankings from organizations that benchmark companies on a variety of DEI factors. To share a few examples from 2021, we received a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index in the U.S.
J&J was named in the top 20 on Fortune's World's Most Admired Company list. This was our 19th consecutive year on that list, honored on the top 50 all-stars list, and we were number one in the pharmaceutical category worldwide for the eighth consecutive year. We were also named to Forbes America's Best Employers for Diversity list. These are just a few examples, Chris, of the many external recognitions that we've received. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing that. That's extremely helpful. Maybe while we're on talent, another related topic for you, Wanda.
How does J&J attract and retain talent?
Certainly. Our Culture of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is one of the ways that we attract and retain talent. People that join J&J share our commitment to our credo values and to our mission to change the trajectory of Health for Humanity. This is really a unifier across our diverse, multi-generational, and global workforce, and it is a differentiator for prospective talent. For more than 130 years, J&J has delivered on a long history of firsts, including Band-Aid, feminine care, cardiovascular stents, cancer treatments, digital health, and of course, most recently, a life-changing vaccine against HIV. Our culture of inclusion allows each employee the opportunity to leverage the breadth and scale of J&J to innovate and to help discover the next breakthrough that will impact patients, customers, and consumers around the world.
Rooted in our values, we invest in our employees for the long term through a robust and competitive total reward offering designed to meet the needs of employees at every stage of life. All of these elements help us to attract and retain great talent.
Great. Thank you so much. Another question from Martin. How do you plan on continuing to tackle global health threats such as TB or Ebola, even in the face of COVID?
Thanks, Chris DelOrefice. That's a really important question. Just to provide some historical context, I came into this role in February of last year, just as the pandemic was dawning. I remember having a conversation with my team, and we decided at the time, as well as playing our part in an enterprise-wide role to develop and deliver our COVID-19 vaccine, we would not let up on our commitment to underserved patients in our disease priority areas such as TB, mental health, HIV, and neglected tropical diseases. We were aware that COVID-19 would cause a massive stretch of already fragile healthcare systems, particularly in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and beyond. Our commitment was to support those healthcare systems and those patients as much as we possibly could during this challenging time.
A great example is actually my first trip to Africa as head of GPH, and actually my last trip before the lockdown was to Rwanda. I went to witness our vaccination program with our Ebola vaccine, called the UMURINZI program. Our Ebola vaccine, which was recently approved and also received WHO prequalification in May, is designed for us to prevent outbreaks before they start. We have an ultimate ambition and strategy that our Ebola vaccine will be one for long-term prophylactic use. It was remarkable to see. We have vaccinated so far 235,000 people in Rwanda to protect them prophylactically against Ebola, originally designed to protect against the previous North Kivu outbreak. Also added to this, we're donating 200,000, enough doses for 200,000 patients, for a new starting collaborative study that we're undertaking with WHO in West Africa.
In addition to this, we continue to strongly focus on all our disease areas, multi-drug resistant TB, HIV, and neglected tropical diseases, and to help ensure that we can continue to positively impact those patients who may be left behind in the COVID pandemic. Back to you, Chris.
Great. Thanks, Martin. Appreciate that. We appreciate everyone's questions. We actually have time for one last question, which will go to Matt. What gives you confidence that your ethics and compliance program is working and reducing potential risks? How has COVID-19 and a virtual work environment impacted your efforts and approach to ethics and compliance?
Thanks, Chris, and hello, everyone. Our global compliance program is designed to prevent, quickly detect, investigate, and correct possible compliance violations. It's based on the following fundamental elements. Well-defined and clearly communicated standards of compliance, a robust compliance governance framework, including autonomy and resourcing, proactive risk management, continuous compliance monitoring through internal assessments and audits, effective and timely response to detected deviations from compliance standards, including developing and following through on corrective action plans with disciplinary actions when appropriate, open lines of communication with a clear policy prohibiting retaliation, as well as ongoing training and education. We're really proud of our strong culture and commitment to compliance and continually assess and monitor risk and put appropriate mitigations in place to address those risks. Ultimately, we aspire to prevent all possible violations.
As it relates to working remotely during COVID-19, fortunately, our program, particularly our monitoring program, is set up so that we almost do all of our work remotely. Of course, we've made adjustments to support these changes as the business has needed to make. As you'd expect, we've been interacting virtually with our stakeholders and the team has supported those efforts. Thanks, Chris.
Great. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate that. Thank you to all of our Q&A panelists and to all of you for joining us today. As always, your interest in Johnson & Johnson. If we didn't get to your question on the webcast today, we will follow up via email. Additionally, you will be receiving a brief survey from Nasdaq Global Perception to provide your feedback related to this event, which is very important to us. We do value your input and ask that you participate so we can continue to enhance our ESG update event. Thank you for your interest in Johnson & Johnson, and stay well. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.