History of the Global Health Innovation Grants Program

Since 2016, The Pfizer Foundation’s Global Health Innovation Grants (GHIG) program has supported community-based initiatives that aim to improve quality of care and strengthen health systems in lower income countries.

Innovations in Healthcare supports GHIG grantees by facilitating connections, hosting program-specific workshops and peer convenings at the Annual Forum while also conducting regular program monitoring to provide portfolio and individual results to the Pfizer Foundation.

Now in its eighth year (GHIG8), 20 new recipients have each received a USD $100,000 one-year grant to drive innovative solutions that help address vaccine-preventable illness in their communities.

GHIG8 geographic scope. This year’s grantees address a range of infectious diseases in sixteen countries, with immunizations programs as a priority.

Introducing Five of the Twenty 2024-2025 Grantees

Friendship Bridge

Friendship Bridge is on a mission to create opportunities that empower Guatemalan women to build a better life. They utilize the tools of microcredit, education, and health services to support their clients in building resilience and pursuing their chosen opportunities.

Their goals for GHIG8 include:

Building awareness and understanding of HPV by providing culturally appropriate training and education to 15,000 rural, Guatemalan women;
Providing preventative health screening and follow-up services through mobile clinics to 800 women; and
Promoting vaccinations through the local healthcare system.

Their activities include:

Crafting digital content and toolkits;
Conducting awareness campaigns utilizing their team of 260 individuals;
Hosting non-formal education sessions;
Facilitating the transition from Pap smear to HPV testing in mobile clinics; and
Enhancing their chatbot for more effective communication and access to health information for their clients.

Grameen Foundation

Grameen Foundation ensures women can access their full potential and build resilience against climate change, financial insecurity, and harmful gender archetypes by enabling new systems of support. They aim to reduce mortality, morbidity, and disability caused by vaccine-preventable diseases by improving vaccination coverage through an enhanced community vaccine delivery model.

In the Prayagraj district of Uttar Pradesh, India, where vaccine and routine immunization has dipped due to COVID-19, Grameen will utilize their GHIG8 grant to increase caretaker awareness of 10,000 primary beneficiaries and 15,000 secondary beneficiaries, leading to the uptake of missed vaccines among children. Grameen’s vaccination initiative will focus on prevention, community-based delivery of care, and leveraging social media platforms through a replicable, scalable, and sustainable delivery model.

Group for Technical Assistance

Commitment from Mayor of Bhanu Municipality, Nepal, during kick-off meeting. The meeting was attended by the deputy mayor, ward chairs, chief administrative officer, immunization chief from the district health office, health section chief, health facility supervisor in-charge, and local stakeholders. Photo credit: The Group for Technical Assistance.

The Group for Technical Assistance (GTA) is a non-government, non-profit, and non-political national organization based in Nepal. GTA envisions a country where everyone has access to civil and human rights, education, and public health services regardless of their gender, caste, religion, ethnicity and class. They intend to ensure that underprivileged, vulnerable and poor communities in Nepal benefit from developmental interventions.

Via GHIG8, GTA will reduce mortality, morbidity, and disability caused by vaccine-preventable diseases by improving vaccination coverage through an enhanced community vaccine delivery model in Bhanu Municipality of Nepal. Objectives include:

Accurately identifying target populations and zero-dose children in real-time through community mobilization and digital backups;
Tailored community-led interventions to reach zero dose and partially immunized children, understanding the facilitators and barriers;
Health systems strengthening; and,
Assessing the feasibility and sustainability of the community vaccine delivery model.

Health Builders

Health Builders addresses issues that fundamentally change healthcare delivery in rural Rwanda to help all community members live dignified, healthy, and prosperous lives. Health Builders aims to improve the quality of primary healthcare and management of health facilities.

Through GHIG8, Health Builders will scale up centralized electronic medical records for under-five care (e-IMCI) in one district of Rwanda. They will improve the quality of primary healthcare and management of health facilities by:

Increasing completeness of assessments, accuracy of disease classifications and treatments;
Cutting the costs of consultation registers;
Reducing reporting errors; and
Improving timeliness and accuracy of healthcare billing.

Last Mile Health

Last Mile Health partners with governments to build strong community health systems that equip paid, professionalized community health workers to provide essential primary healthcare to patients in the world’s most remote communities.

Last Mile Health has supported Liberia’s Ministry of Health to deploy the electronic Community-Based Information System (eCBIS), a government-managed clinical support system that helps health workers identify, diagnose, treat and refer sick children in rural and remote communities across four counties. To date, 1,283 community health workers and their supervisors have been trained on eCBIS.

Through GHIG8, Last Mile Health will accomplish three key goals via:

Feedback: Collect feedback on how eCBIS is being used for immunization, infectious disease service delivery, and community health worker supervision;
Adaptation: Adapt and co-design eCBIS supervision workflow to include assessment of functionality of digital health equipment; and,
Data Usage: Visualize and increase the availability of data for decision making and quality of supervision, immunization, and device management services across Liberia’s National Community Health Program

As a proud partner of the GHIG program, Innovations in Healthcare looks forward to improving access to and uptake of vaccines. Through the program, GHIG8 grantees will demonstrate real impact on pathways for vaccine access.

This blog is the second installment in a four-part series highlighting the GHIG8 grantees. Access the first blog here. The full list of GHIG8 grantees include: