Each year, roughly 150 million people experience a financial catastrophe due to a health crisis—and 100 million are plunged into poverty. In addition, poor health, malnutrition and untreated conditions can prevent women and families from overcoming poverty—regardless of how hard they work.
For people to live healthy productive lives, they need access to health financing, health education, health providers and health products.
Our community health financing programs create ways for a poor woman to pay for the care she needs, whether through health savings accounts, microinsurance or women’s savings groups.
Health financing combined with health information also generates more rational demand for health services. This allows us to build partnerships with health providers and bring their services closer to underserved communities.
Our solutions build local capacity, track outcomes, and improve health access enabling women and families to not only survive, but thrive.
Innovating in Health Finance
When poor people need treatment, and have no medical insurance, out-of-pocket expenses often make safe, reliable care unattainable. But one creative solution has enabled people to overcome that hurdle, and get the care they need.
Promoting Health
Acquiring health knowledge and information is an important first step in achieving health. Gaining access to health financing and health services is next. Our innovative programs find new ways of providing both.
Training Health Workers
Community health workers, nurses and midwives are on the frontlines of protecting health in countries without enough doctors, hospitals and clinics. We use digital technology to train health workers serving remote areas.
Facilitating Clinical Trials
Digital technology can help accelerate the development and testing of new vaccines that can prevent deadly disease outbreaks from turning into uncontrolled epidemics. In Sierra Leone, we are facilitating a vaccine clinical trial against Ebola.