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Alnylam Challengers: Empowering Frontline Care for Underserved Communities in Boston
November 18, 2025
At Alnylam, we believe that access to quality health care, life-changing medicines, and the support to live healthy, fulfilling lives should be within everyone’s reach. Yet in our hometown of Boston, health outcomes can differ drastically by ZIP code. Most notably, research has shown a life expectancy gap of 23 years between the more affluent neighborhood of Back Bay and the lower-income neighborhood of Roxbury, located just two miles apart.
To help address this challenge, we are investing $2 million to advance the essential work of Boston’s frontline Care Navigators through Alnylam Challengers, our signature global social impact program. We are partnering with three of the city’s most trusted healthcare institutions: Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and Whittier Street Health Center.
The new partnerships kicked off during Alnylam’s Community Service Week in September, with employees volunteering at the annual Whittier Street Health Fair and providing hygiene and care kits for patients at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital, helping thousands of community members.
Watch the Alnylam Challengers video.Why Care Navigators?
Care Navigators serve as a vital bridge between clinical care and lasting health and well-being for patients in underserved communities. Often drawing on similar lived experience, they provide personalized coaching, build trust, and connect the hardest-to-reach individuals to essential medical and social services. From helping parents access emergency groceries to connecting families with housing support or transportation to medical appointments, Care Navigators play a crucial role in addressing barriers to care and improving health outcomes.
Research has shown that investments in care navigation deliver strong returns, especially when integrated into care teams serving high-need communities. For example, a review by The Commonwealth Fund of numerous studies evaluating care management models found “higher follow-up visit rates, fewer emergency department visits, reduced Medicaid spending, and reported returns on investment as high as $2.92 for every $1 spent” (The Commonwealth Fund, 2019).
A Collaborative Model for Impact
With this new initiative, Alnylam is investing in four programmatic areas across our nonprofit partners to drive impact:
- Hiring Care Navigators and creating cohorts that offer professional training, peer support, and shared resources.
- Deploying a Rapid Response Fund that empowers Care Navigators to purchase low-cost, high-impact items that help patients address urgent, time sensitive needs related to transportation, food insecurity, and other non-medical challenges.
- Expanding Patient-Centered Programming by investing in one-on-one, customized care navigation and wrap-around health and employment support through community outreach initiatives and education.
- Establishing the Challengers Collective to engage nonprofit partner leaders, Care Navigators, and Alnylam employees via working groups and convenings to capture patient insights from the field, advance innovations, and amplify the importance of the Care Navigator role in improving health outcomes.
Our employees will also continue to play an important role in supporting Care Navigators and our community partners, leveraging their skills and expertise to support programs, mentor staff, and connect directly with the community.
Together, we aim to create a scalable, community-based model for reducing health disparities in Boston and beyond. A model that ensures every patient feels seen, heard, and supported by removing barriers and delivering high quality, personalized care to those who need it most.
Click here to learn more about Alnylam Challengers, our signature global social impact program, and how we’re investing in communities around the world. We invite you to learn more about our approach to corporate responsibility at Alnylam.
