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Innovation and Impact E-newsletter from the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact. USAID Global Health

March / April 2022

 

FEATURE

Acting Deputy Director Nikki Tyler speaks at Gasworld medical gasses event

Acting Deputy Director Tyler and other panelists on gasworld session | Photo courtesy of Gasworld

This month, CII’s Acting Deputy Director Nikki Tyler spoke at “A World Beyond Covid: Next Level Healthcare,” a Gasworld virtual event. Gasworld, the focal point for global industrial gas news, views and intelligence, brought together industry and public health leaders under the same digital roof to take the lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic and apply them moving forward to build healthcare systems where access to medical oxygen is the standard everywhere. Many of the discussions focused on ways in which Ministries of Health, donors, and other stakeholders can better partner with the private sector to increase access to medical oxygen. Nikki spoke to the evolution of USAID’s oxygen strategy over the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting bulk liquid oxygen as an oxygen modality that needs to be explored even more to ensure access.

 

Market Access icon. Market Access

Financing Alliance for Health named 2022 Skoll Foundation Awardee

This month, the Financing Alliance for Health was named a 2022 Skoll Foundation Awardee. The Financing Alliance partners with governments on all steps of financing to strengthen and sustain community health systems; leveraging primary health care to attain universal health coverage. CII developed in partnership with the Financing Alliance the report Strengthening Primary Health Care through Community Health Workers: Closing the $2 Billion Gap, which was designed to help governments, donors, and other partners in global health develop and strengthen country-level financing pathways for community health.

Financing Alliance for Health CEO Dr. Angela Gichaga | Photo courtesy of Financing for Health
 

Innovation Icon Innovation

CII selected to serve as VinFuture Prize nominator

CII is honored to serve as a nominator for the VinFuture Prize, which focuses on catalyzing meaningful change in people’s everyday lives through tangible and highly scalable improvements. The VinFuture Prize pledges US$4.5 million annually to reward breakthrough scientific research and technological innovations, including special VinFuture Prizes that will highlight achievements by “outstanding female researchers or innovators” and “exceptional researchers or innovators working in an institute located in a developing country”. Past awardees include Professors Quarraisha and Salim Abdool Karim for their work leading a landmark clinical trial in South Africa that provided the initial evidence that antiretrovirals (ARVs) prevented sexual transmission of HIV, thereby laying the foundation for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) as an HIV prevention approach.

VinFuture Prize logo | Photo courtesy of VinFuture
 

Digital Health Icon Digital Health

OECD Secretary-General launches report on digital transformation - with inputs from CII’s Adele Waugaman - at high-level panel

Last week, the OECD Secretary General convened a high-level panel including ministers from a diverse range of government ministries to formally launch the 2021 OECD Development Cooperation report entitled ‘A Just Digital Transformation’, which advocates for the voices of low- and middle-income countries to join the global digital policy debate. A section on development cooperation strategies and financing approaches includes a case study contributed by CII’s Adele Waugaman relaying the priorities of the USAID Digital Health Vision and how they are being applied through the global COVID-19 response, and shares new evidence, analysis, and ideas for tackling the digital divide.

OECD Secretary General Cormann delivers remarks at report launch | Photo courtesy of OECD
 

broadcast bars CII NEWS

Adele Waugaman joins Consortium of Universities of Global Health (CUGH) panel session on technology and global health

Health Data Governance Principles launch, becoming first set of principles to guide the use of data in health systems

CII participats in White House OSTP and HRSA co-hosted virtual roundtable to launch the “Community Connected Health Initiative

 

book icon What We're Reading (And Listening To)

The Washington Post
Failing to fund the U.S. covid response bodes trouble for the entire world

World Economic Forum
How innovative financing will help prepare for future pandemics

The Atlantic
This is what happens when there are too many meetings

Harvard T.H. Chan
Power dynamics

 

book iconJob Opportunities

Director, Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition
PATH

 

STAFF SPOTLIGHT

Amarynth Sichel, Digital Health Advisor

Amarynth Sichel, Digital Health Advisor

Amarynth is a Digital Health Advisor in the Center for Innovation and Impact (CII). Her work focuses on driving USAID’s implementation of the Vision for Action in Digital Health, also known as the DH Vision. Prior to joining CII, Amarynth served as the Head of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) at Simprints, a nonprofit biometrics company. Before her tenure at Simprints, she spent time at the University of Cambridge and in the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea, studying and working on digitization in urban planning and policy contexts.

When not working, Amarynth is a serial hobbyist: she enjoys rock climbing, running, practicing her Korean language skills, and recently starting knitting and re-learning the violin!

Read Amarynth’s full interview here [PDF, 288K]

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USAID's Center for Innovation and Impact (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 invests seed capital in the most promising ideas and novel approaches, using forward-looking business practices to cut the time it takes to transform discoveries in the lab to impact on the ground.

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