The new funding will support data integration between Global.health, WHO and others to analyze genomic, climate, wastewater, mobility, epidemiological and clinical data to better predict emerging threats of infectious disease and coordinate the global response
NEW YORK | November 1, 2022 – Today, the Rockefeller Foundation announced $3 million in new funding for Global.health (Gh)—a leading open source platform for scientific pandemic data—to expand Gh’s international partnerships and modernize global efforts for prevention, surveillance and pandemic coordination. answer.
“It’s time to take data collection and analysis for better public health to the next level. The scientists behind Global.health are advancing digital innovation and collaboration to create a global pandemic early warning system. As part of this effort, they will connect disparate datasets linking, among other things, climate and health, so that we can better detect early warning signals for new outbreaks of diseases linked to our planet that it’s getting warm”, he said. Dr. Naveen Rao, Senior Vice President, Health Initiatives, The Rockefeller Foundation. “We are pleased to extend our support for this important initiative.”
Following initial grants from Google.org and The Rockefeller Foundation in 2020, Gh will use these new funds to support expanded international collaborations with leading scientific research institutions, including the WHO Center for Epidemic and Pandemic Intelligence in Berlin, the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation. (CERI) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC) in the UK, and the Gorgas Memorial Institute in Panama. In addition, Gh will make open source tools, training, datasets and research opportunities globally available, cultivating a team of scientists from around the world, giving priority to low- and middle-income countries .
The $3 million financing for Gh was made through RF Catalytic Capital, Inc. (RFCC), the Foundation’s public charity launched in September 2020 as an innovative new tool for foundations, impact investors, businesses and governments to combine their resources to scale up funding solutions and bring about transformative change during response and recovery from Covid-19.
“We have learned a great deal from Covid-19 about how to better prepare for and respond to infectious disease outbreaks – and at the top of the list are the importance of robust surveillance, reliable data and rapid response,” said. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization. “I welcome the Rockefeller Foundation’s support for expanding the reach and impact of Global.health, including continued collaboration with the WHO Center for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, to enable faster data-driven decision-making at the earliest signs early stages of an outbreak – when it matters most.”
“Building open, transparent and, most importantly, scalable platforms that transform data points into action is vital to ensure an informed, coordinated and rapid response to current and future infectious disease outbreaks,” said. Jacqueline Fuller, President of Google.org “It’s been inspiring to see how the platform, which Googlers helped build in 2020, has evolved to meet new epidemiological crises.”
Priority initiatives enabled by this grant will include:
- Assessing the impact of different data sources for determine which data points are most useful during the first 100 days of an infectious disease outbreak.
- Developing scalable and robust open source algorithms and data pipelines to detect and predict the emergence and geographic spread of novel Variants of concern of Covid-19 (VOCs) globally.
- Combining human mobility data with network science algorithms to optimally configure and distribute public health interventions during emerging epidemics across the constraints of country or state borders.
- Creating open source methods and frameworks for pandemic response analysisso the results can be used directly by groups engaged in the broader pandemic preparedness ecosystem and improve the translation of science into practical applications that are scalable and rapid enough for real-world outbreak response.
- Cultivating working groups with international teams of scientists, giving priority to low- and middle-income countries to co-develop applications and translate them into real-world impact as they are generated. Funded conferences, workshops and collaborations will foster a global team of scientists from around the world. This includes research and collaborative scientific projects and training specific to the tools and methods developed through this grant funding.
Dr. Moritz Kraemer Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and John Brownstein, Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Co-Fthe founders of Global.health, commented: “This new funding from The Rockefeller Foundation will allow us to dive deeper into what data and interventions have the most impact for controlling disease outbreaks at different stages of a pandemic. These are critical steps in advancing pandemic prevention and response as threats from climate-driven infectious diseases grow.”
About Global.health
Co-developed at the University of Oxford and Boston Children’s Hospital, Global.health is a first-of-its-kind open source technology platform that enables access to real-time anonymized health data on infectious disease outbreaks. To date, the Gh database includes over 100 million detailed, verified, harmonized and de-identified SARS-CoV-2 case records from 130+ countries: the most comprehensive repository of Covid lineage list data -19 in the world.
What began as a volunteer-driven data science project at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Global.health has grown into a scalable and flexible data platform that sets a new standard for open, granular data and standardized cases that are vital for epidemiologists and public health managers to model and mitigate the spread of emerging infectious diseases. In 2022, Global.health’s curated and validated dataset of Monkeypox cases became one of the most comprehensive and cited sources on the first 100 significant days of the outbreak. For more information, visit Global.health, sign up for our newsletter and follow us I tweet.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology and innovation that enable individuals, families and communities to thrive. We work around the world to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal and sustainable. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility and ensuring equitable access to health care and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.
Media contact
Davina Dukuly
The Rockefeller Foundation
+1 (646) 465 – 0885
[email protected]
