Accelerating Global Demand for Covid-19 Vaccines

We have the supply. But now demand for Covid-19 vaccines is at an all-time low. To address this situation and increase vaccinations around the world, we need to work with in-country partners and use all the tools at our disposal. There's no time to lose.
Read the Full Plan
A Deep and Lasting Commitment To Fight Covid-19 and All Future Pandemics

From the earliest months we have championed a national Covid-19 testing plan and improved access to tests and treatments for all. Testing numbers have soared to nearly nine million tests a week, but the rates of infection, hospitalization and death continue to climb to new highs, while too much of the impact has fallen on society’s most vulnerable communities.

The Rockefeller Foundation is now redoubling its efforts to catalyze a recovery from this crisis that delivers a more equitable and sustainable recovery and helps guard against future pandemics.

A Fresh Burst of Giving

The Foundation plans to commit $1 billion to this recovery over three years, with the money going to health initiatives, an aggressive push to expand access to reliable energy, and other causes. The health effort will ensure wider access to Covid-19 tests and vaccines. It will also deliver more science-based tools to fight the pandemic and strengthen public health systems to prevent future outbreaks.

  • OCTOBER 14, 2021

    Survey on U.S. Teens and Young Adults’ Attitudes Towards Covid-19 Precautions

    The Generation Lab, a polling and research firm studying young people and the trends that shape their world, conducted a nationally representative survey of 908 U.S. teens and young adults ages 13-29 looking at attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines, testing, and mandates in late August.
  • September 22, 2021

    Covid-19 Testing and Vaccination Strategies to Reach Communities at Risk

    This report gives state and local health officials real-world best practices from seven successful U.S. localities, to help increase Covid-19 testing and vaccination rates among hardly-reached communities where vaccination and testing rates are lowest.
  • SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

    Covid-19 Testing Strategies for Congregate Care Facilities

    As the nation enters a second fall season of the Covid-19 pandemic, the millions of Americans living in Congregate Care Facilities (CCF) continue to need protection from the virus, particularly the more infectious Delta variant. This September 2021 report provides updated technical guidance discussing how the new Delta variant has increased risk of transmission and how efforts to vaccinate the elderly and health care workers has lowered risk of transmission.
  • August 18, 2021

    Will Students Come Back? School Hesitancy and Parental Preferences for Covid-19 Safety Practices in Schools

    A second wave of research, conducted by RAND Corporation and commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, details parents’ preferences for in-person school safety measures even with the rise of Covid-19 cases from the Delta variant. Among key findings: 9 in 10 parents plan to send their children in person for the school year and 1 in 3 parents do not feel informed about their school’s safety precautions, and 6 in 10 say they want more information on what schools are doing.
  • July 27, 2021

    Implementing Covid-19 Routine Testing in K–12 Schools: Lessons and Recommendations from Pilot Sites

    This report, Implementing Covid-19 Routine Testing in K–12 Schools: Lessons and Recommendations from Pilot Sites, was led by Mathematica and funded by The Rockefeller Foundation to share critical guidance and best practices based on lessons learned from 335 school-based testing sites nationwide.
  • June 30, 2021

    Reinforcing the Value of Covid-19 Testing: Message Brief

    As public attention has turned to vaccines, it is more important than ever that we reinforce the importance of widespread testing to stop new outbreaks before they start. informed by a nationally-representative study, this message brief on Reinforcing the Value of Covid-19 Testing to explore the motivations behind Americans getting tested even as vaccinations rates rise and how vaccination status may or may not affect attitudes about testing.
  • June 10, 2021

    Will Students Come Back? Parent’s Attitudes to School Re-Opening

    New research, conducted by RAND Corporation and commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, details parents’ preferences for in-person school safety measures and how they differ on racial and ethnic lines. Among key findings: 84 percent of parents plan to send at least some of their children to school in person in the fall, another 12 percent are unsure, and only 5 percent of parents have no plans to do so.

  • Interactive Dashboard for Covid-19 Testing In Schools

    Mathematica, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Duke Margolis Health Policy Center partnered to create an interactive online dashboard that allows school leaders to explore the benefits and drawbacks of routine testing in their schools and to guide decisions about which testing strategies to implement. The dashboard uses computational models that imitate how interactions of individuals contribute to community-level outcomes, to help education leaders and decision makers implement smart strategi

  • Three Steps to Smart Covid-19 Testing: A Guide for Employers

    While there is no ideal one-size-fits-all testing strategy, this guide walks businesses and organizations through three key steps to shape a testing plan best suited to the organization’s needs:1) assessing risk; 2) choosing the best testing strategy; and 3) putting testing strategies into action.
  • April 22, 2021

    Baltimore Health Corps Pilot: Summary of Early Lessons

    Building on the successful testing model implemented in university settings, The Rockefeller Foundation will support the efforts of both the Consortium of Universities and the University of Illinois to expand the covidShield test-and-trace program to K-12 schools to support reopening efforts within Washington, DC and Baltimore.
  • April 8, 2021

    Vaccine Confidence Message Brief

    The Vaccine Confidence Message Brief was created to explore what motivates high-priority audiences to get the Covid-19 vaccine and offer motivating message recommendations. We conducted both a national message testing study and focus groups among people expressing concerns about getting the vaccine—including healthcare workers, K-12 teachers, and Black and Latina frontline workers.
  • March 25, 2021

    K-12 National Testing Action Program

    The Rockefeller Foundation’s K-12 National Testing Action Program (NTAP), developed in collaboration with 21 U.S. labs and testing manufacturers, is designed to operationalize the $10 billion allocated to K-12 school testing under the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan. The program highlights a 3-step testing protocol to test teachers twice a week and students once a week with case studies on early-adopter of school-based testing. In addition, NTAP connects schools with testing vendors.
  • March 15, 2021

    Equitable State and Local Covid-19 Testing Strategies for Communities at Risk

    Vulnerable communities most impacted by Covid-19, including communities of color, areas of low income or with high-income inequality, and rural areas, often have limited to no access to pharmacies and health systems that provide the foundation for testing and vaccination networks. This report supports state and local leaders in developing equitable testing strategies to protect vulnerable communities most impacted by the pandemic.
  • February 4, 2021

    Building the Evidence for Reopening Schools

    New evidence from RAND Corporation and Mathematica, commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, finds that regular Covid-19 testing in primary and secondary educational settings is critical to getting students and teachers back to in-person instruction. These reports provide cross-cutting considerations and implications to guide other schools and districts across the country that are considering implementing Covid-19 testing.
  • December 2020

    Taking Back Control: A Resetting of America’s Response to Covid-19

    Our third National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan lays out a new plan for the largest domestic testing scale up to date and proposes 14 executive actions for the current and incoming administrations to take in order to rapidly alter the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States. Testing all U.S. public K-12 public schools would cost $42.5 billion, or $8.5 billion per month for the remainder of the school year from February to June 2021.

  • STAT: State and Territory Alliance for Testing

    States and territories in STAT meet regularly to learn about advances in testing, share success stories, and listen to experts preview the most promising technological breakthroughs.

  • New: Covid-19 Testing Communications and Community Engagement Toolkit

    A new resource to promote Covid-19 testing. The Testing Toolkit helps translate public health goals into motivating, clear messages that educate Americans about why, when, and where to get tested — even if they feel healthy. All materials are open access, completely free to use, and customizable.

  • Facing Uncertainty: The Challenges of Covid-19 in the Workplace

    Covid-19 Workplace Commons, powered by a survey from more than 1,000 companies, provides guidance and data on how companies are protecting their employees from Covid-19.

  • Covid-19 Testing Strategies for Schools

    In order to facilitate the safe reopening of schools, measures to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission must be at the forefront. This report aims to aid the discussion around whether and how to reopen in-person schools more safely.

  • Covid-19: Message Handbook

    For any testing and tracing strategy to work, we have to motivate people to act. That’s why we’ve launched the Testing & Tracing Message Handbook. This Handbook draws on insights from cognitive science, linguistics, focus groups and a nationally representative message-testing survey.
  • July 2020

    National Covid-19 Testing & Tracing Action Plan

    We’ve gone from 1 million to 4.5 million tests per week in the U.S., but we’ll need to redouble our efforts to make it to 30 million tests per week and beyond in order to reopen communities and economies, and keep them open.

  • Covid-19 Testing Solutions Group

    To facilitate the exchange of best practices for public health authorities and federal, state, city, and tribal officials working to scale up pandemic testing needs in order to reopen their economies while safeguarding public health.
In light of the current crisis, The Rockefeller Foundation 2020 President’s Annual Letter by Dr. Rajiv J. Shah focuses on the Foundation’s response to COVID-19, and how we and our partners are meeting this moment by helping communities respond, recover, and eventually rebuild. We have set three goals for our COVID-19 Response: 1) accelerating the […]

Covid-19 Diagnostic Resources for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Covid-19 diagnostic resources for lower- and middle-income countries help to ensure that all countries can access affordable, accurate Covid-19 tests.

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map of where the virus has spread globally.
  • The time to act is right now to make sure vulnerable children and families are included in the pandemic response and recovery.
    Dr. Rajiv J. Shah
    President, The Rockefeller Foundation

Explore Our Commitments

Our work is focused on improving access to electricity, food, healthcare and economic opportunity. We do that through creative partnerships and innovative investments to extract more value from data and private capital.

  • Food Advancing a more nourishing, regenerative and equitable food system.
  • Clean Energy We accelerate access to and consumption of reliable, renewable electricity in underserved, low-income communities worldwide, empowering hundreds of millions of people while building the climate-smart energy system of the future.
  • Health For over 100 years, we’ve worked to advance the fields of public health and medical science to improve health outcomes for all people, everywhere.
  • Economic Equity Our vision is that every working person in America should be able to meet the basic needs of their families – and have a path to a better future.
  • Emerging Frontiers We aim to accelerate the impact of our programmatic work through impact investing, data science, technology, and innovation to the greatest inequities in the world.
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