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‘A Meeting of Minds’: World’s largest global health and social entrepreneurship conference set for April
The 11th annual Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale University will draw more than 2,200 participants from around the world. Speakers will cover a variety of topics, including social entrepreneurship, social businesses, business in global health, design thinking, maternal and child health, and non-communicable diseases.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Rx for Global Health: New drug-diagnostic combos are emerging, but are our market structures ready to support them?
Traditional ways of viewing diagnostics and drugs separately are starting to blur, especially in the developed world. But new business and partnership models are needed if these boundary-spanning new technologies are to reach low-income countries.
- Categories
- Health Care
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The Best of 2013: Bridging the Gap with Early Capital for BoP Models: An impact evaluation of VisionSpring in El Salvador
It’s natural for impact investors to focus on companies with measurable social impact and financial returns. But they often overlook models with impact potential that are still in their pre-commercial phase. This lack of early stage capital can limit the development of promising businesses, leading to missed opportunities for the poor and for investors. That’s why the IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority initiative offers grants to pre-commercial pilots like VisionSpring’s eye care model in El Salvador.
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- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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‘Vanity is Not Monopolized By the Rich’: VisionSpring’s innovative way to sell eyeglasses proving to be sustainable; a Q&A with COO Peter Eliassen
Through a hub-and-spoke business model, middle-income customers are subsidizing company’s work with BoP consumers. And it’s proving to be sustainable.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- supply chains
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‘Mobile Midwife’ Empowers Ghanaian Women: Phone apps provide key information during different stages of pregnancy
Almost everyone in Ghana has a mobile phone subscription. That led a to a collaborative initiative to use cell phones to increase the quantity and quality of prenatal and neonatal care in rural Ghana and improve health outcomes for mothers and their newborns.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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‘I Don’t Wish I Had AIDS’: If only diabetics worldwide could feel the same way
In a 2012 study, diabetic patients were consistently heard "wishing they had AIDS." That’s because, in many parts of the world, diabetes is a death sentence. However, with greater access to information and affordable care, it doesn’t have to be.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- public health
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India’s No. 1 problem is No. 2.: Tansa Clean tests ‘biodigester’ technology to improve sanitation
Some $54 billion is lost from the Indian economy from health costs, lowered productivity, and absent tourism revenues, all of which originates in diarrhea. Anaerobic biodigesters are airtight tanks that create just the right environment for bacteria to become active, breaking organic wastes down into methane-rich biogas and a nutrient-rich slurry. The founders of Tansa Clean, are launching a pilot to test the potential of their biodigester in India.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Social Enterprise in Haiti: An oxymoron or a reality?
More than two dozen development-minded thinkers and doers convened in Cambridge, Mass., for a competition-based workshop designed to find a market-based solution to cholera in Haiti. The winning idea, which includes recruiting and training “community chlorinators,” is expected to be up and running by this time next year.
- Categories
- Education, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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