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SC Johnson and the Gate Foundation Partner Together for Global Health Initiatives
We partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on many of our Base of the Pyramid initiatives, as we value the complementary perspectives that both organizations bring to the table. Depending on the initiative, our joint teams often include people well-versed in diverse disciplines including medical entomology, pharmacology, global public health delivery, market shaping, manufacturing, and product supply. And while we all bring strong technical expertise to our teams, we recognize that our solutions will only realize meaningful impact if we ground ourselves in the daily lives of our end users. So we spend time together in the communities of the people we are trying to serve.
No one deserves to live in fear of malaria– there are many solutions that play a role in preventing its transmission, ranging from repellents, rapid diagnostic tests, mosquito nets, and drugs. The people that live in malaria’s world don’t always accept these solutions into their lives to the extent that we might hope. They are often designed to address malaria from a technical perspective, and they do that well. When used, these solutions work. But often the solutions are misused or not used at all when they don’t fit into our users’ existing routines, their daily lives, their existing habits.
These insights drive our work together–we take a human-centered approach. We immerse ourselves in our end users’ lives to genuinely understand their priorities, how they live their lives, and what’s truly important to them. We spend time sleeping with families under mosquito nets in their homes, tapping trees with migrant workers on rubber plantations, or traveling with midwives to provide care in rural communities. We believe that if we ever hope to create sustainable solutions that will ultimately eradicate malaria, we first need to truly understand the people that live in malaria’s world.
No one deserves to live in fear of malaria– there are many solutions that play a role in preventing its transmission, ranging from repellents, rapid diagnostic tests, mosquito nets, and drugs. The people that live in malaria’s world don’t always accept these solutions into their lives to the extent that we might hope. They are often designed to address malaria from a technical perspective, and they do that well. When used, these solutions work. But often the solutions are misused or not used at all when they don’t fit into our users’ existing routines, their daily lives, their existing habits.
These insights drive our work together–we take a human-centered approach. We immerse ourselves in our end users’ lives to genuinely understand their priorities, how they live their lives, and what’s truly important to them. We spend time sleeping with families under mosquito nets in their homes, tapping trees with migrant workers on rubber plantations, or traveling with midwives to provide care in rural communities. We believe that if we ever hope to create sustainable solutions that will ultimately eradicate malaria, we first need to truly understand the people that live in malaria’s world.
