As a scientific philanthropy, we have focused, throughout our history, on being data-driven in catalyzing capital and partnerships, by which we scale sustainable solutions to the world’s most intractable problems facing communities. Preventing the spread of infectious disease, which will become harder in a world changed by a warming climate, is a critical part of pandemic prevention.
In 2021, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Pandemic Prevention Initiative (PPI), a USD $150 million investment that works with partners around the world to strengthen global pathogen surveillance and response with the goal of securing a pandemic-free future for humanity.
The Pandemic Prevention Initiative facilitates the development of regional surveillance networks and, ultimately, a global early warning system to protect against pandemics.
To date, we have formed a network of over 40 partner organizations that bridge sectors and geographies to strengthen partnerships and enable an early warning system. Through grants to several network members, this work has already discovered new Covid-19 variants accelerating the response, protecting the most vulnerable. We have also invested in creating a global data science platform to identify signals of emerging pandemics by connecting data from disparate sources with state-of-the-art, multi-pathogen infectious disease software tools, and models.
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Wastewater Surveillance
Wastewater surveillance has emerged as a valuable epidemiological tool to detect outbreaks before they spread. It can detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants in a community and monitor trends over time. Because wastewater monitoring does not rely on access to individual diagnostics, it can provide insights that are essential for controlling the current Covid-19 pandemic and preventing future pandemics.
