Health

What might be attractive targets for a new global funding pool?

There are a number of global funding pools where donor countries contribute resources to support work for a particular set of objectives in poorer countries. Examples include:

These global funding pools work in a number of slightly different ways: they might handle procurement directly or leave it to recipient countries; they might provide grant funding or concessionary debt financing; they might work directly or indirectly with other partners (e.g. multilateral development banks, UN agencies). They tend to get most of their funding from the governments of richer countries (although they also take donations from private foundations, companies, and even individuals). Most recipients are low- and lower-middle-income country governments and civil society partners.

Global funding pools provide a simple way for governments to provide official development assistance at scale. They do not rely on donor countries to develop specific expertise in the problems they seek to address. They reduce fragmentation in the provision of foreign aid and can reduce political pressure in rich countries to spend aid money in ways that reduce cost-effectiveness (e.g. by spending aid on suppliers in donor countries, or supporting recipient countries that have a close relationship with donor countries). By creating large pools of money and operating at a large scale, they are able to secure attractive prices from suppliers, and share expertise on what works with recipient countries.

We’re interested in understanding what other global funding pools could exist, how they might be brought about, and how they might best deliver outcomes. Although the most famous global funding pools today are health-related, we are not only interested in health-related suggestions.

A possible list of funding pool targets could include: health workforce training, blood pressure medications, safe water provision, telecoms infrastructure, and free school meals. This list is intended to stimulate thought and is not designed to be exhaustive.

If you are interested in this prompt, we suggest that you:

  • Look at some of the existing global funding pools to understand how they work, where they are successful, and where they have difficulties.

  • Explore how the existing global funding pools came about.

  • Propose a new global funding pool and explain why it is a good idea.

  • Consider whether it makes sense for this pool to exist separately from existing institutions or whether it would work better as an extension of an existing pool.

  • At a high level, outline how the new pool might work (e.g. grant vs concessional debt financing, allocation rules between countries, decision making processes, partner organizations). 

  • Outline the key outstanding questions that would need to be addressed when trying to create such a funding pool.

Suggested reading:

This prompt is meant to help you get started, but we are very open to different approaches to answering this question.

What are the most important and addressable sources of health-impacting pollution in low and lower-middle income countries?

Pollution and environmental contaminants can have major health consequences. Two examples that have received more attention in recent years are small particulate air pollution and lead. 

Open Philanthropy launched its South Asian Air Quality program area in 2022 to address the harms associated with ambient and household air pollution in South Asia. The IHME estimates that air pollution in South Asia accounts for nearly 3% of all global DALYs. Our initial investigation suggested that there is very limited funding in this area today (<$10M / year) and found several plausible funding opportunities to help reduce the burden which would cross our bar for cost effectiveness.

UNICEF estimates that 800 million children live with levels of lead in their blood which limit their development and cause cognitive and physical impairment. We have contributed to work by Pure Earth to review the sources, associated harms, and possible solutions to lead exposure. Other Open Philanthropy grantees (e.g. Center for Global Development, Charity Entrepreneurship) have also been working on lead elimination.

We are interested in understanding whether there are other sources of health-impacting pollution in LMICs which could become the basis of new program areas at Open Philanthropy.

If you are interested in this prompt, we suggest that you:

  • Critically assess the evidence which ties health and economic burdens to a particular environmental pollutant or contaminant, recognizing that the available evidence is unlikely to be as robust as that available in a randomized controlled trial.

  • Discuss a couple of example grants that could be made to address this problem. These could involve real or hypothetical grantees. For example, “I’d fund grantee X to do Y” or “I’d want to fund Y if I could find a grantee to carry it out.”

  • Provide a list of questions that you think need to be investigated, but which you don’t have the time or space to discuss in your submission.

Please do not write about PMI 2.5 pollution or lead exposure, since we consider ourselves relatively well-informed in these areas.

This prompt is meant to help you get started, but we are very open to different approaches to answering this question.