Time for new ideas and fresh faces

Abstract

Global health is too important to be left to global health experts. That is why a new initiative announced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Cape Town on Oct 9 is welcome. The initiative, a 5-year US$100 million grant programme called Grand Challenges Explorations, will provide hundreds of small start-up grants to researchers who come forward with promising new ideas to tackle key problems in global health.The initiative is modelled on the investment strategies favoured by venture capitalists. Initial grants will be about $100 000 but more funds will become available if projects show progress. Successful projects could ultimately receive millions. The Foundation promises that the application process will be simple and the grant-review process swift.The goal is to encourage scientists who might never have worked in the field of global health or even medicine to start to think about global health problems and hopefully come up with new, even unorthodox solutions, and to make it easier for researchers in the developing world to secure grants.The new initiative will build on the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative that the Foundation launched in 2003. In that initiative the Foundation, in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health, assembled an international expert panel to identify the major scientific and technological roadblocks obstructing progress in global health. The panel ultimately drew up a list of 14 challenges, ranging from creating new childhood vaccines to enhancing the nutritional value of staple crops. To date, $450 million of Foundation funds as well as funds from the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have gone to support more than 40 projects in more than 30 countries.But these investments have been conservative, with grants, by and large, going to well-established researchers. The investments of this new programme will, no doubt, prove to be far more risky. Indeed, most are likely to fail. But even if the programme fails to lead to major breakthroughs, it could still enrich the field of global health with new ideas, new people, and new ways of thinking. Global health is too important to be left to global health experts. That is why a new initiative announced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Cape Town on Oct 9 is welcome. The initiative, a 5-year US$100 million grant programme called Grand Challenges Explorations, will provide hundreds of small start-up grants to researchers who come forward with promising new ideas to tackle key problems in global health. The initiative is modelled on the investment strategies favoured by venture capitalists. Initial grants will be about $100 000 but more funds will become available if projects show progress. Successful projects could ultimately receive millions. The Foundation promises that the application process will be simple and the grant-review process swift. The goal is to encourage scientists who might never have worked in the field of global health or even medicine to start to think about global health problems and hopefully come up with new, even unorthodox solutions, and to make it easier for researchers in the developing world to secure grants. The new initiative will build on the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative that the Foundation launched in 2003. In that initiative the Foundation, in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health, assembled an international expert panel to identify the major scientific and technological roadblocks obstructing progress in global health. The panel ultimately drew up a list of 14 challenges, ranging from creating new childhood vaccines to enhancing the nutritional value of staple crops. To date, $450 million of Foundation funds as well as funds from the Wellcome Trust and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research have gone to support more than 40 projects in more than 30 countries. But these investments have been conservative, with grants, by and large, going to well-established researchers. The investments of this new programme will, no doubt, prove to be far more risky. Indeed, most are likely to fail. But even if the programme fails to lead to major breakthroughs, it could still enrich the field of global health with new ideas, new people, and new ways of thinking.