By Judith Rodin on 12 April 2013
In May 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation
trustees met for the first time to discuss the priorities of the young
philanthropy, established under New York State charter with the mission
to “promote the well-being” of humanity. A long-time advisor to founder
John D. Rockefeller Sr., Frederick Gates made the case that the
foundation should focus its work on disease, which he called the
“supreme ill of human life.”
While the trustees couldn’t have known it then, this meeting would
put into motion a century of health innovations, from the creation
of the field of public health to the development of a vaccine for yellow
fever to the establishment of infectious disease surveillance networks
at the end of the 20th century.
Today, many other challenges have emerged that contribute to and
reinforce the threats to well-being. From economic inequalities
to climate change, these issues are much more complex and interconnected
than what the foundation faced in 1913, requiring systemic solutions
from across sectors to bring about lasting change.
Health challenges themselves have dramatically evolved as well. For
one, as lifestyles have changed, so have the causes and nature
of diseases themselves. The changing demographics of our planet – our
aging, increasingly urban populations – demand different
interventions and more sophisticated solutions to build and maintain
healthy societies. As we’ve seen with the SARS outbreak and the spread
of H1N1 over the last decade, viruses can move as quickly as
a high-speed train or a 747.
To address the interrelated challenges of our modern world, the
Rockefeller Foundation today focuses on global health as one component
of our work to meet the dual goals of achieving more equitable growth
and building greater resilience against the stresses and shocks of
our modern world. In addition to advancing health, we work to transform
cities, revalue ecosystems and secure livelihoods, as our main focus
areas.
Our health work centers on transforming health systems with the goal
of helping nations achieve universal health coverage, to relieve the
disproportionate burden that out-of-pocket medical care puts on the poor
and vulnerable.
We work towards UHC from both the technical and policy perspectives. On the technical side, we support the Joint Learning Network for UHC,
a network of policy makers and practitioners from 10 countries in Asia,
Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa to share learning and identify
innovative solutions to advance UHC at the country level.
In many of these countries, we pioneer innovative pilots aimed at
reducing costs and expanding coverage. For example, through our pilot
program in Chakaria, located in southeastern Bangladesh, we learned that
local residents distrusted public hospitals so much that they were
choosing to pay out of pocket for private care. To address this issue,
we developed a prepaid health care package at a cost of about
$15 annually per household, which covers medical consultations,
hospitalizations, vaccinations and maternal health. Through grassroots
marketing efforts, including leaflets and street fairs, enrollment in
the package increased tenfold in the first half of 2012. We’re now using
this wealth of data to refine the program and extract lessons for other
parts of the country.
Click on the image to see in larger size.
At the policy level, we have worked to build the political will and
enabling environments for UHC as a centerpiece of the global
health agenda – and with real success. Last December, the United Nations
General Assembly passed a resolution, sponsored by more than 90
countries, positioning UHC as the unifying health goal for the post-2015
agenda for sustainable development.
But we know that the problems we work to address today will be
replaced with new issues and challenges 100 years from now. That’s
why in January, nearly a century after that first Board meeting, we
brought together leaders in health and innovation experts from around
the world to Beijing for a Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Global
Health Summit to help us dream the future of health for the next
century. We heard truly exciting and promising ideas, from
more participatory, democratic learning opportunities through massive
open online courses, to an emerging field of epideminomics,
combining the fields of epidemiology and economics. There was also a
good deal of talk about the importance of not just global health, but
planetary health – and a clear recognition that both are inextricably
linked. The Rockefeller Foundation is taking a closer look at ways we
can fold these insights into our future work and
grant-making strategies.
But we also recognize that philanthropy cannot on its own solve the
pressing health challenges that we face – rather, we must work to build
the partnerships across all sectors to advance smart business practices,
help government create equitable, pro-health policies, open new
pathways to innovation, and attract new capital that will ensure
progress can be sustained. For philanthropy’s part, we must continue to
take the risks other sectors cannot, engage new actors from all sectors
and regions, and provide mechanisms for constant, mutual learning to
inform our progress.
From public health to e-health, it’s been an incredible journey,
alongside extraordinary partners. We feel privileged to be able to
do the work we do at this dynamic moment in our world. We may not know
what the future holds, but with history as our guide, we are
prepared for the century ahead.
Note:
Judith Rodin is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic organizations. Prior to the Rockefeller Foundation, she was the president of the University of Pennsylvania, and provost of Yale University. She was the first woman named to lead an Ivy League Institution and is the first woman to serve as the Rockefeller Foundation’s president in its nearly 100-year history. Dr. Rodin is the author of more than 200 academic articles and has written or co-written 12 books and has received 18 honorary degrees and serves as a member of the board for several leading corporations and non-profits.
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