Health Fund

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CAUSE FUNDS > health fund

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The Health Fund is an excellent opportunity for donors who want to support proven disease interventions, particularly of diseases and conditions which are preventable or easily treatable in high-income countries. The organizations that benefit from this fund mitigate mortality due to malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and HIV/AIDS, all illnesses which we have the tools to do something about. The fund also addresses other severe conditions, including malnutrition and access to quality maternal-child care.

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Key Strengths: Evidence, Scale, Depth of impact

Multidimensional Poverty Index Indicators: Child mortality, Nutrition

Other Key Outcomes: Vaccination rates, Physical safety, Violence against women and girls, Child development, Healthcare utilization, Disease burden

 

Why donate to the Health Fund?

This fund addresses the most fundamental viewpoint of our organization: all lives are of equal value. And yet, billions of people worldwide are at risk of contracting a life-threatening disease because they don’t have access to health services. The inequality is staggering with children in wealthy countries having a 99.8% survival rate until the age of 5, while in the poorest countries, 1 in 10 children will die by the same age. Every day, approximately 16,000 children under the age of 5 die of malnutrition, birth conditions, pneumonia, diarrheal disease, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. This is a narrow list of preventable or treatable diseases and conditions. With 5.3 million children dying annually, the number of families who experience the grief of child loss could be drastically decreased with health interventions. Additionally, one third of the world’s population, of which a large percentage are pregnant women and children, are chronically malnourished, which has long-term health and development effects.

 

Has country already reached SDG target on child mortality?

Target 3.2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to reduce child mortality rates to less than 1.2 per 100 live births. Child mortality refers to the estimated rate of newborns who die before the age of five.

Data source: United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2023) – OurWorldInData.org/child-mortality | CC BY

What is the intended impact of the Health Fund?

  • Supporting nutrient fortification, including iodine and micronutrients, which prevent intellectual and developmental impairments and stunting due to deficiencies.
  • Creating and/or providing preventive medicine, supplementation, and healthcare access, which address the leading causes of child deaths, such as malaria, diarrheal illnesses, and vitamin A deficiency.
  • Delivering customized health education and media campaigns at scale to inform communities of essential health practices, thus saving and improving lives by supporting skills, knowledge, and behavior related to accessing healthcare.
  • Promoting population health by increasing the uptake of childhood vaccinations.

 

How do we measure impact?

Our research team works closely with our recommended nonprofits, actively monitoring their progress on key outcomes. These outcomes focus on the health dimension and indicators of the Multidimensional Poverty Index, which include child mortality and nutrition. The nonprofits in this fund also work on other key outcomes such as healthcare-seeking behavior, preventing domestic violence, and the use of contraceptives. We explore the sources of impact metrics, ranging from internal monitoring and evaluation data, to external impact evaluations, including randomized controlled trials. In evaluating the impact of our recommended charities and projecting their future potential, we analyze the convergence of evidence from diverse sources, including external evaluations and the broader literature on specific interventions. Additionally, we assess the impact of our grants and their ability to strengthen the ecosystem of high-impact organizations. Key questions are central to these evaluations, such as: 

  • Do our grants effectively realize their intended objectives? 
  • Are our recommended nonprofits making tangible progress towards their goals on an annual basis? 
  • Are these organizations able to secure additional funding and expand the reach of their programs? 

The successful scaling and increased financial backing of our recommended charities serve as indicators of achievement for our team.

Read more about how we measure impact

To learn more about our research and evaluation process, please refer to the following links:

 

 

How does the Health Fund work?

Our research team establishes annual funding goals for each recommended charity through our ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and understanding of funding needs across our fund of recommendations. These goals inform the percentage allocated to each charity within the fund.

We actively review funding goals and determine fund allocations every six months. You have the option of giving 100% to charities – or sending 90% of your donation to the charities and 10% towards our operations. We give this option because we do not charge donors fees, but rather raise funds for our own operations separately.

Read the current Health Fund allocations.

 

Who are the Health Fund recipients and what is their demonstrated impact?

Select Charity
Unlimit Health Sanku - Project Healthy Children Malaria Consortium Iodine Global Network Living Goods Helen Keller Intl Population Services International New Incentives Development Media International Breakthrough Trust CEDOVIP Against Malaria Foundation

Unlimit Health works with Ministries of Health and Education in sub-Saharan African countries to support programs controlling and eliminating two types of parasitic worm infections: schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis. The majority of programs treat school-aged children, but can also include at risk adults. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Developing a new strategy for sustainable impact and disease elimination, including water and sanitation-focused approaches to reducing disease transmission, which complements extensive treatment programs. 
  • Testing an approach to community-driven planning of environmental and behavioral action to reduce the risk of transmission of schistosomiasis.

Sanku – Project Healthy Children’s mission is to provide children everywhere with the simple, inexpensive, basic nutritional support they require to survive and thrive. Sanku – Project Healthy Children focuses on achieving wide micronutrient coverage for at risk communities in Africa and beyond. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • 2024 achievements include:

    In June 2024, Sanku launched its Nutrient Premix Blending Factory in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The first of its kind in East and Central Africa. The factory is expected to provide affordable, high-quality nutrient premix locally, supporting millers in their fortification efforts and reducing logistical challenges. The new factory gives millers convenient access to high-quality nutrient premix produced based on each country’s fortification standards and includes Folic Acid, Vitamin B12, Zinc, Iron micronutrients among others. 70% of the packaging and raw materials, including the wheat carrier, essential for nutrient premix, will be sourced from local millers.
  •  

Malaria Consortium delivers programs that protect the poorest and most marginalized children in Africa and Asia from a range of deadly diseases, including malaria and pneumonia. The Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) project is an extremely cost-effective and evidence-based approach to protect children under 5 from malaria. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Delivering seasonal malaria chemoprevention to 24 million children, up from 20 million in the previous year. 
  • Supporting ministries of health in Ethiopia and Chad to create national pediatric pneumonia control strategies.

The Iodine Global Network (IGN) is the leading global organization supporting the elimination of iodine deficiency, the most common cause of brain damage in newborns. IGN supports healthy iodine nutrition through a safe, effective, and affordable solution: iodized salt.

Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Advocating with the government to widen salt iodization in Sri Lanka, protecting Sri Lanka’s population from iodine deficiency. 
  • Conducting a review of efforts to support small-scale producers in iodizing salt. In countries such as Senegal, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Cambodia, these producers supply salt to households in poor or remote areas who are not protected from iodine deficiency.

Living Goods supports and trains local community health workers, the majority of whom are women, to deliver lifesaving medicines, health education, diagnoses, and health products to millions of people who need them in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Uganda. They focus especially on preventing and treating the leading causes of child deaths. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Supporting over 12,000 community health workers with training, digital literacy, and digital tools, bringing basic healthcare to the most in need in Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso with the use of advanced digital tools to transform health systems.
  • Measuring a 46% reduction in child mortality in areas impacted by droughts where Living Goods-supported community healthcare workers operate, suggesting an effective healthcare workforce reduces the number of children who might have died due to drought, and that investing in improved community healthcare helps build climate resilience in low-income areas.

Helen Keller Intl’s Vitamin A Supplementation programs provide critical nutrition to children around the world at risk for vitamin A deficiency, a condition that can lead to blindness and death. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Supporting 388,000 families with education and tools to grow, prepare, and sell vitamin A-rich foods. 
  • Providing 32 million children under the age of 5 with two doses of vitamin A.

Population Services International helps women live healthier lives and plan the families they desire through a network of locally-rooted, globally-connected organizations working to achieve consumer-powered healthcare. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Reaching 14.6 million consumers through accelerated market growth and systems change by working with governments.  
  • Reaching 5.8 million consumers through their social business model by funding shops where individuals may access basic medicines and contraceptives.

New Incentives educates caregivers about the importance of vaccinating children and disburses cash incentives that are conditional on infants receiving four life-saving vaccines, provided through government clinics free of charge. New Incentives also works with government partners to improve vaccine supply. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Enrolling over 1.5 million infants for vaccines.
  • Expanding into 4 new states in northern Nigeria, Gombe, Kano, Kaduna, and Kebbi, for a total of 9 states of operation. 
  • Increasing their cash incentives after gathering detailed feedback from caregivers and stakeholders.

Development Media International runs large-scale media campaigns in low-income countries to create informative and engaging programming that focuses on maternal and child health, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation, sexual reproductive health, and early childhood development. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Reaching over 90 million people with media campaigns on health subjects in sub-Saharan Africa. 
  • Launching projects in Tanzania, Madagascar, Burkina Faso and Mozambique that have been shown to increase life-saving treatment for severe childhood illnesses. 
  • Saving an estimated 8,500 children’s lives with a media campaign in Mozambique that helps parents and caregivers understand when and how to seek healthcare services for their ill children.
  • Launching two pilot projects that aim to improve health outcomes in young adults in Zambia.

Breakthrough Trust works on culture-based change in India, focusing their programs on girls and boys aged 11 to 24. They partner with the government and help redesign school curricula to include material on gendered violence, as well as running mass media campaigns to reach a large audience. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Transforming gender norms by working in 13 districts and 4 states within India, including Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Delhi/NCR. 
  • Collaborating with state governments in Punjab and Odisha and education departments to embed a gender lens into the middle school curricula and train teachers and school leaders to build gender sensitivity.

CEDOVIP is a locally-run, Uganda-based nonprofit that establishes and helps run community-led programs focused on reducing violence throughout Kampala and northern Uganda, with ambitious plans to scale their work throughout the rest of the country. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Coordinating a Learning Center to provide more than 300 activists and practitioners with practical skills to effectively mobilize communities for violence prevention in collaboration with Raising Voices. 
  • Developing a handbook with protocols for the Ugandan police force to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.
  • Influencing parliamentary approval of the Domestic Violence Bill in Uganda.

Against Malaria Foundation works to prevent the spread of malaria by distributing long-lasting, insecticide-treated mosquito nets to susceptible populations in poor countries. Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

  • Distributing 36.5 million mosquito nets over 12 months, protecting 66 million people. The impact of these nets is estimated to be 24,300 deaths averted, 12 to 24 million malaria cases prevented, and US$880 million in improved economic performance.

Fund Manager

Our team works to recommend high-impact donations. Contact us if you have questions about giving to the Health Fund.

Matias Nestore

Matias Nestore

Senior Associate, Research and Evaluation

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