Skip to Content
Coefficient Giving
November 22, 2023

New Grantmaking Program: Global Public Health Policy

By James Snowden

Editor’s note: This article was published under our former name, Open Philanthropy. Some content may be outdated. You can see our latest writing here.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve added a new cause area to our Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio: Global Public Health Policy.

The program will be overseen by Santosh Harish, Chris Smith, and James Snowden. Santosh will lead the majority of grantmaking for the program.

We believe that some of the most important global health problems can be addressed cost-effectively by working with governments to improve policy. Policies like air quality regulations, tobacco and alcohol taxes, and the elimination of leaded gasoline have saved and improved millions of lives.

These policies typically improve public health by addressing risk factors to alleviate the burden of non-communicable disease, which comprises a growing share of the health burden but receives relatively few resources. Policy interventions affect entire populations and are often cost-effective for governments to implement. We think philanthropy can have an outsized impact by helping governments design, implement, and enforce more effective public health policies.

We’ve already made some grants for related work:

The chart below shows how little funding goes to address our current global public health policy focus areas relative to their estimated burden.

This pair of bar charts contrasts annual deaths with annual philanthropic and aid spending for various health issues. The charts illustrate a discrepancy, showing that "GPHP focus areas" like alcohol and air pollution cause millions of deaths but receive far less funding (in the millions) compared to issues like HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis, which receive funding in the billions.
Sources: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation; Mew et al. 2017; Open Philanthropy estimates

This program represents a consolidation and expansion of previous grantmaking from both Open Philanthropy and GiveWell (which incubated Open Philanthropy, and still works closely with us).

Open Philanthropy launched a program focused on South Asian air quality in January 2022, led by Santosh Harish. In October 2023, we expanded the scope of the program to include lead exposure, alcohol policy, and suicide prevention, building on a portfolio of grants which were recommended to Open Philanthropy by GiveWell.

These four topics are our current focus, but in the future we may explore other large health burdens addressable through public health policy such as tobacco, asbestos, and exposure to other pollutants.

We believe our grants to date have already resulted in meaningful impact, and we’re very excited for the potential of this new area. For more details, see the area page. And if you’d like to get in touch with us for any reason, email info@coefficientgiving.org.