NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Over the past several years, crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Kiva have helped people all over the world raise money for a host of activities—artistic endeavors, tech startups, community or personal projects, charities, and more. Now there are plans for a crowdfunding site focused on raising money specifically for global public health projects—things like stocking a rural health clinic or providing a water filtration system for a small village.

The new platform will be launched soon by Janssen, the pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson. Students and faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health got an overview about how the platform will work on April 30, 2015 in Kresge 502 from Derek Fetzer, a director of global public health at Janssen; and Harvard graduate Sara Gorman, PhD ’13 (English literature), who works as a consultant for Janssen and is an MPH candidate at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Gorman has also worked as a research assistant for Michelle Williams, chair of Harvard Chan’s Department of Epidemiology, who introduced the two speakers.