In 2024, grantees in Open Philanthropy’s Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) portfolio made progress toward developing a next-generation malaria vaccine, successfully advocated for U.K. retailers to adopt a new welfare standard that we expect to improve conditions for 350 million chickens, and contributed to reducing exposure to lead — one of the world’s deadliest pollutants — among many other important developments.
This post highlights some examples of our GHW portfolio’s progress in 2024, in particular how we believe our grantees’ work has improved lives in measurable, cost-effective ways. If you want to support our grantees’ work, many of them provide opportunities for direct donations, which are linked at the end.
Global Public Health Policy
In November 2023, we launched our newest program area, Global Public Health Policy, to tackle major yet underfunded health challenges such as air pollution, lead exposure, and suicide by pesticide ingestion.
Center for Global Development, Pure Earth, Lead Exposure Elimination Project, and Pahle India
At this year’s U.N. General Assembly, we launched the Lead Exposure Action Fund, a collaborative fund that raised over $100 million to tackle lead exposure. Lead exposure is estimated to kill over 1.5 million people a year, but only received $10–15 million per year from philanthropic actors prior to these efforts.
LEAF has already started making grants to support groups such as the Center for Global Development, Pure Earth, the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, and Pahle India. These organizations work to measure lead pollution, mitigate exposure, and attract mainstream attention to the issue among governments and key stakeholders. Their work contributed to establishing the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a global public-private partnership dedicated to reducing lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). These efforts will double annual philanthropic spending on lead exposure in LMICs, addressing a critical funding gap.
EPIC Air Quality Data Gaps Fund
The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) launched the Air Quality Data Gaps Fund to address a critical gap: air pollution kills an estimated 4 million people in LMICs each year, yet nearly 40% of countries lack comprehensive public air quality data.
The Fund, a regranting initiative, supports local actors in countries with high air pollution levels in establishing low-cost sensor networks to provide data on air pollution where none currently exists. The goal of collecting this data is to increase awareness among citizens and government agencies, which research suggests may prompt policymakers to address pollution and improve air quality.
Global Health R&D
Health technologies like vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics have saved millions of lives worldwide. Yet relatively few exist for neglected diseases — especially those affecting individuals in LMICs. Our Global Health Research & Development program (GHR&D) supports the development and distribution of these technologies to address these gaps, focusing on diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, and sickle cell disease.
Simon Draper (Next-Generation Malaria Vaccines)
R21 — a promising, low-cost malaria vaccine (partly developed by our program officer Katharine Collins) — began rollout in several African countries in 2024. While R21 has the potential to save many lives, it requires three to four doses, and its protection may fade over time. This is where Simon Draper’s work comes in. A professor of vaccinology and translational medicine at the University of Oxford, Draper is working to develop a next-generation malaria vaccine by combining R21 with new promising malaria vaccines that target a different stage of the malaria parasite. This could enable him to create a more effective, longer-lasting vaccine that protects more people with fewer doses.
Clinton Health Access Initiative (Sickle Cell Disease)
The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is a global health organization that conducts market shaping to lower drug prices (e.g., by helping governments negotiate with drug manufacturers). They also provide technical assistance to governments drafting health policies and partner with them to implement those policies.
With our support, CHAI is now expanding its sickle cell disease (SCD) work in Nigeria, India, and Ghana. SCD might be responsible for nearly 400,000 deaths a year worldwide despite the existence of effective treatments, as most affected countries do not yet have widespread screening programs. CHAI will support suppliers in bringing approved treatments to high-burden countries and work with local stakeholders to design SCD screening, diagnosis, care, treatment, and retention programs. We believe our support will help CHAI’s work to expand access to sickle cell screening for thousands of children.
Scientific Research
Our Scientific Research program identifies neglected yet high-impact scientific research, supporting work to fill gaps in the literature and improve our understanding of human health. The program focuses on areas such as antiviral drugs, vaccine development, basic immunology, novel scientific tools and methods, and the advancement of biomedical research. This team often works in close collaboration with the Global Health R&D program.
Neil King and David Baker
Dr. Neil King, a structural biologist, and Dr. David Baker, a professor of biochemistry and director of the Institute for Protein Design, are researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine who aim to develop universal flu vaccines.
With our support, the duo has pioneered computational protein design, a new method for creating proteins with specific properties and functions, and applied it to flu vaccine development. Using AI, they design “virus-like particles” that can be produced inexpensively at scale. These particles expose the immune system to parts of the virus that stay consistent across flu variants, potentially enabling vaccines that provide long-lasting protection against multiple strains.
Our support of King and Baker’s novel vaccine development pathway aligns with our hits-based giving strategy. We are more willing than most big funders to support innovative research when the potential impact is large. This helps us address funding gaps passed over by institutions with a lower tolerance for risk. Baker’s 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry demonstrates how this approach can lead to breakthrough successes.
Dr. Tobi Kollmann (Colostrum)
Dr. Tobi Kollmann is a researcher in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at Dalhousie University and an honorary research associate at The Kids Research Institute. He studies the effects of colostrum on neonatal sepsis.
Colostrum, the first secretion before breastmilk production, is thought to help newborns adjust to life outside the womb and provide protection against infection and sepsis. While colostrum is widely researched and used in cattle rearing to prevent sepsis, its effects in humans remain understudied.
With our support, Dr. Kollmann is building on his previous work to determine the composition of human colostrum, study its effects, and develop and test synthetic colostrum in animal models. If this leads to the creation of an effective synthetic colostrum that can be widely used in LMICs, where half of newborns do not receive colostrum, this grant could reduce the rate of neonatal sepsis (approximately 1.3 million cases and 200,000 deaths reported per year).
Land Use Reform
Our Land Use Reform program works to improve land use policies from a public interest perspective by supporting research, advocacy campaigns, and legal work on housing policy reform. These efforts aim to increase the supply of housing, which we think would help reduce housing costs, encourage economic growth, and reduce carbon emissions.
Open New York
Our grantee Open New York (ONY) is an advocacy group working to increase the supply of housing and reduce rent prices in New York State, especially in the New York City metropolitan area, where the challenges are most acute.
We believe ONY played an important role in the recent passage of “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” New York City’s largest zoning overhaul in 50 years. The organization mobilized hundreds of volunteers for public hearings while running the steering committee for a 150-group coalition, leading communications efforts about the proposal’s benefits, and working with City Hall and Council Members’ offices to keep the plan on track.
The city planning department expects City of Yes to create 80,000 new homes over 15 years by legalizing accessory dwelling units in more places, reducing parking mandates, and changing zoning rules to allow denser construction across the city. This is the first set of major pro-housing reforms to pass in New York City.
Innovation Policy
Our Innovation Policy program aims to safely accelerate scientific and technological innovation — key contributors to economic growth and material progress. The program expanded this year, bringing on Jordan Dworkin as its first program associate.
Living Literature Reviews
Learning from frontier academic research has become more challenging as the scale of newly published research grows and research becomes increasingly specialized. Our Innovation Policy program addresses this by funding experts to produce “living literature reviews” — continuously updated online collections of articles that synthesize recent research in a broadly accessible format.
Our grantees write about many different topics. Tom Gebhart writes Some Are Useful, a living literature review on how ideas from machine learning and artificial intelligence are being used across the sciences, ranging from weather forecasting to the automated discovery of new connections between concepts. Lauren Gilbert writes about the social science of immigration; articles so far cover the effects of the Mariel Boatlift on jobs and crime and the link between crime and immigration more generally. Michael Goff’s Scaling in Human Societies looks at topics related to agglomeration, from how transportation technologies constrain the size of cities to the dynamics that make cities more productive. Other living literature reviews cover topics ranging from the economics of innovation to societal collapse.
Farm Animal Welfare
Roughly 145 billion animals live on factory farms worldwide. Our Farm Animal Welfare program supports efforts to improve the lives of these animals and reduce the number that are factory farmed in the future.
The Humane League, Compassion in World Farming, and Open Cages
Since mid-2023, six large retailers (representing about ⅔ of the U.K. retail market) have committed to reducing overcrowding for chickens in their “fresh” chicken supply chain. Research shows that more space reduces painful health conditions in chickens, with one U.K. retailer reporting a 29% average improvement in “common ailments” after implementing these changes.
We believe these reforms largely resulted from sustained campaigns led by U.K. groups we funded, including Compassion in World Farming, The Humane League, and Open Cages. We estimate that commitments secured by our grantees cover about a third of the chickens raised for their meat in the U.K. — more than 40 million chickens alive at any time (or 350 million chickens per year).
Albert Schweitzer Foundation
The Albert Schweitzer Foundation (ASF) works in Germany to raise animal welfare standards and reduce the consumption of animal products.
This year, ASF secured commitments from Germany’s second– and fourth-largest retailers to improve chicken welfare in their supply chains. Both retailers committed to shifting to slower-growing breeds — which have better health and welfare than standard breeds — along with other reforms. Across both retailers, we estimate the pledges will affect 19 million chickens alive at any time (or 165 million per year).
In late 2023, ASF and other groups also contributed to Lidl Germany’s pledge to shift its protein offerings to include more plant-based proteins by 2030 (from 11% to 20%) and to price its own-brand alternative protein products at parity with equivalent animal products, which resulted in a 30% jump in sales.
Global Aid Policy
Our Global Aid Policy program supports advocacy, technical assistance, and research to counterfactually increase high-income countries’ aid spending and help make aid more cost-effective.
Joep Lange Institute
The Joep Lange Institute (JLI) is a policy organization focused on global health. Our Global Aid Policy program supported JLI’s “Debt to Health” (D2H) initiative, a financing mechanism that converts debt repayments into investments in The Global Fund’s health programs. Under these swaps, a creditor nation forgoes repayment of a loan while the debtor nation channels the proceeds toward programs addressing HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases. By helping additional donor countries adopt D2H programs, JLI hopes to secure commitments that will provide tens of millions of dollars in additional funding for The Global Fund programs.
Effective Altruism for Global Health and Wellbeing
Our Effective Altruism (Global Health & Wellbeing) program supports organizations and projects that enable people to use their donations and careers to improve the lives of humans and animals as much as possible. The program’s grantees raise funds for highly impactful charities, incubate promising new charities, and conduct research on cost-effective interventions. This year, the program welcomed Melanie Basnak as a senior program associate.
Founders Pledge
Founders Pledge (FP) is an organization that advises entrepreneurs on charitable giving to maximize impact. To date, FP has more than 2,000 members who have collectively donated over $1 billion to charities.
In 2024, FP facilitated several donations with tangible health impacts. FP believes one member’s donation to RestoringVision enabled 2.5 million people in India and Nigeria to receive vision screenings and glasses. FP also supported LEEP’s efforts to secure government commitments for lead paint regulation in nine countries.
Doneer Effectief
Doneer Effectief is a Dutch effective giving organization that directs donations to charities backed by rigorous scientific research and evidence.
With our support, Doneer Effectief raised over $2.6 million in its first full operating year with only ~one full-time equivalent employee and a team of volunteers. It has carried out multiple initiatives to raise these funds, including creating brief YouTube explainers on effective giving, organizing workshops on “talking better about effective giving,” and developing an online fundraiser platform for effective charities. Thanks to this platform, they organized a six-mile walk that raised over $30,000 for the Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP).
How you can support our grantees
These are just a fraction of the hundreds of great people and organizations supported by programs within our Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio. We are proud to support our grantees as they work to improve the lives of people and animals worldwide.
If you want to support this work, many of our grantees accept direct donations. Follow these links to make a donation to the Center for Global Development, Pure Earth, LEEP, Open New York, The Humane League, Open Cages, the Albert Schweitzer Foundation, and Founders Pledge. You can find other staff recommendations for individual donors on our website.