Four Reasons Why GSK and Save the Children’s Partnership Stands Out
In recent years, collaboration between companies, governments and civil society has become an integral part of the development landscape. Its importance has been underlined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which all sectors recognise cannot be achieved without partnership and the contribution of the private sector. Growing numbers of businesses are entering into partnerships, whether […]
Moving Beyond Transactional Relationships
Over the last several years, models of business / NGO collaboration have begun to shift quite significantly. Five years ago, the relationship between a company and an NGO was most likely to be transactional in nature: a donation or sponsorship from the company or, in the case of a company’s social investment, a fee-for-service arrangement […]
Tackling Undernutrition for the World’s Poorest
Given that 45 per cent of child deaths (that’s nearly half) are because of undernutriton, tackling it should be the highest of priorities for our decision makers. It is also very relevant to note, that a majority of those deaths are amongst the most vulnerable and poorest communities. With this is mind, as most people, […]
A New Plan to Fight a New Health Challenge
While the headlines might focus on Ebola or yellow fever, Africa is slowly winning the fight against infectious diseases. They will remain a challenge for decades to come, but the real threat of the future is expected to come from elsewhere: non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Soon, NCDs are likely to […]
Making the Global Goals Our Business
Not everyone gets to live their dream job, but I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I do. I lead GSK’s global employee volunteering efforts, including PULSE, our flagship program. PULSE is a skills-based volunteering program that matches up to 100 high-performing employees each year with a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in need of their expertise […]
Co-creation Shaking Up the Health Sector
Imagine that you are the founder of a healthcare start-up. You have passion, experience, and a strong team of changemakers around you – but you lack the resources to take your organisation to the next level of growth. Now imagine that you are given the opportunity to work with one of the world’s leading healthcare […]
Transcending the Boundaries of Business School
In order to transform our world and achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we must look beyond the ‘way we do things’ in our own industries, learn to be adaptive and work in multi-sector teams. In early 2006, I walked into a room where the global CEO of Unilever, Barclays Bank, Porsche and […]
Crossing Oceans for Child Health
Transcending boundaries to build a sustainable future naturally evokes different responses in everyone depending on their frame of reference. My own career and early experiences have been focused on child health, first as an orphanage volunteer in Africa, then a nurse, and later on working towards my doctorate, and now as an entrepreneur developing wearable […]
Activating the Power of the Market for Humanitarian Aid
Activating the power and reach of the market for a sustainable future What does it mean to transcend boundaries? The definition of “transcend” is to rise above, or go beyond normal limits. For the purpose of this discussion, consider these boundaries: physical – defined by political/geographical regions; institutional – reflecting rules, written or unwritten, by […]
Social Entrepreneurs Defining the Future of Healthcare
There is a global crisis in healthcare; the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one billion people lack access to basic care, and a further 100 million are pushed into poverty trying to access it. The situation doesn’t look likely to improve. The WHO estimates that there will be a deficit of more than 12 […]
Helping People Lead Healthy Lives
Last year saw the release of the much referenced Lancet report Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health. Published prior to COP 21 in Paris, the report considered the impacts of climate change on public health and estimates that cutting carbon emissions could reduce 500,000 premature deaths a year from air pollution […]
Four Steps to Help Widen Access to Innovative Medicines
Getting medicines to patients living in the world’s poorest countries is no easy feat. A dearth of trained health workers, out-of-pocket payments, poorly stocked clinics and unreliable transport links can all conspire to keep medicines out of reach from those who need them. When it comes to unlocking such a complex challenge, there’s no single […]
Improving the Quality of Chronic Disease Care in China
Corporate citizenship is in the midst of a promising evolution. To address key societal needs, more companies are moving from a narrow view of philanthropy to a strategy that sets business goals to achieve positive social outcomes. Over the past century, corporate philanthropy has been defined largely by giving—that is, the donation of goods and […]
Three Lessons in Strengthening Health Systems
What does it take to make health systems more robust – to ensure they can handle everyday illnesses, as well as pre-empt and manage future challenges or crises? There is no easy answer to this question; but what’s obvious is that there’s no single way to strengthen a health system. We need to think laterally. […]
Building More Resilient Health Systems
Last week, the Philippines became yet another country in a growing list to caution women to delay pregnancy[i] as the country braces itself against an outbreak of the Zika virus. The virus is already spreading rapidly across Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as parts of the US, causing the World Health Organization to […]
Hybrid Social Finance: Partnerships That Drive Success
By Bernard Coffey, Former business leader and long-time volunteer, Ashoka Support Network (ASN) team It was a simple networking dinner where a business executive met a social entrepreneur with a great idea, which led to a long-term and very successful partnership in the nascent field of social finance and “impact investing.” The social entrepreneur, Luke […]
The Ripple Effect of Vision Care on the SDGs
When the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) were formally adopted last year, many in the sustainability community saw this as a moment of triumph. The seventeen goals are not only ambitious but also universal, and the private sector worked hand in hand with government and academics in their development. Yet sceptics have wondered whether the […]
Fighting Malaria, Improving Health. Together
“We know what works. The challenge now is to do even more.” That was the mission set out by Dr Margaret Chan, World Health Organization director-general, as she introduced the latest annual malaria report. Published just last month, this showed astonishing progress against one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases. Since the start of […]
Providing Affordable Healthcare in India
Supporting Healthcare Workers in India
