USAID’s Bureau for Global Health’s Center for Innovation and Impact (CII) introduces their 2019 Impact Brief, which features an overview of their work and progress this past year. CII takes a business-minded approach to fast-tracking the development, introduction and scale-up of health interventions that address the world’s most important health challenges. CII blends public health expertise with experience in med-tech and pharmaceutical strategy, finance, business management, and management consulting to work hand-in-hand with their technical colleagues across the Bureau for Global Health.
Innovations come from, in part, the Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development (SL@B). SL@B calls on the brightest minds across the globe to identify and scale groundbreaking approaches to save the lives of mothers and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of birth. The Saving Lives at Birth partners — USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, UK’s Department for International Development, and the Korea International Cooperation Agency — have committed nearly $100 million to support the scale up of innovative tools and approaches to improve the lives of mothers and newborns during their most vulnerable hours.