For more than a decade, Jeff Skoll has supported pandemic preparedness and enabled the Skoll Foundation to invest heavily in a global COVID-19 response. As part of this work, the Foundation supports partners who are tackling both the immediate and longer-term pandemics challenges faced by communities around the world.
The Skoll Foundation’s guiding question has been how we can work with partners across sectors and borders help stop the spread of COVID-19 while at the same time building towards stronger, more resilient health systems that can help prevent future pandemics?
A generous contribution from Jeff Skoll enabled the Foundation to quadruple its grantmaking in 2020 and a $100 million commitment in 2021 will accelerate its grantmaking in pandemics and health system strengthening work over the next five years. Anticipating gaps in capacity relative to the need, much of the first wave of COVID-19 response funding went to support the pandemic response in Africa. Subsequently, our focus broadened as the pandemic spread around the world, leading us to invest in interventions in Latin American, Asia, and the U.S. See below for more information.
The Foundation continues to aim for catalytic investment opportunities in science, policies, practices, and collaborations that can bring an end to this pandemic. We understand that failure to build solutions that serve the marginalized populations most impacted by COVID-19 is a failure to support those most adversely affected by the pandemic.
The Foundation is also applying both a COVID-19 and an equity lens to its investments across its portfolio, in areas of democracy, economic inclusion, climate action, and racial justice, and is supporting its Awardees and grantees as they pivot and adjust their operating models to meet this moment.
A pandemic is a whole-of-society challenge, with impacts on health, economic wellbeing, communities, governance, and more. Effective coordinated responses are critical in order for solutions to be scalable and reach more people.
Determining where COVID is prevalent, who is infected, and with whom infected people have interacted is the first step to slowing its spread.
Community healthcare workers are the first line of defense in controlling the spread of COVID in much of the world. Training, equipping, and resourcing these healthcare workers leads to improved public health outcomes.
Contribute to Give Foundation’s India COVID Response Fund (ICRF) to support the existing capacity of hospitals and public healthcare systems to scale efforts around detection, protection, and treatment of COVID-19.
For a novel disease like COVID-19, diagnostics, treatments, therapeutics, and vaccines are key to saving lives and eventually bringing the pandemic under control.
COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in a century, an incomparable experience for most people. Effective communication of the risks of COVID-19, and how to mitigate them, is a critical component of the public health response everywhere.
COVID-19 exposes shortcomings in a range of medical equipment and supplies, from PPE to breathing support and more. Eventual vaccine distribution will present huge logistical challenges that must be tackled now.
Data and digital tools are critical for decision support, understanding disease trends, communicating at scale, and interacting with patients and communities.
COVID-19 has impacted communities in extremely unequal ways, with populations already facing complex socioeconomic challenges and suffering disproportionately.
The following is a selection of articles covering our work in pandemics.
