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Optimism through the Lens of Global Health

8/30/2016

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As the summer comes to a close, SEAD interns have been sharing with us stories and experiences from their summer internships. Today's post comes to us from Courtney Cobb, who interned with USAID  for the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact as part of the HESN Labs internship program. Learn more about HESN here.
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Nearly every few days this summer some horrific event rocked a community, country, and the world. Orlando, Bangladesh, Nice, Germany… the list goes on. Headlines refer to this summer as the “Summer of Hate” or the “Summer of Terror.”  As a result of all these events, many were left reeling in the aftermath, afraid to travel and perhaps feeling declining faith in humanity. My summer travels took me to India and Bangladesh, staying in a hotel just minutes away from the location of the café attack in Dhaka. Luckily, I had returned to the US days before. Despite all the violence and uncertainty, my summer offered me something very different -- a glimmer of hope.

This summer, I was the Innovation Scale-Up Intern for the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact, a cross-cutting team at USAID in the Global Health Bureau. The Center utilizes business-minded approaches to develop, introduce, and scale health innovations. One of the major objectives of the center is to help interventions accelerate impact through market access and scaling efforts.

This summer, I led a market assessment in India and Bangladesh for a medical device called bubble CPAP (bCPAP), which is a type of CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. Over 15 million babies are born prematurely each year and one of the most common complications is Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS)1. RDS is often fatal if not treated and the preferred treatment for RDS is CPAP therapy, as this device helps the baby to breathe by keeping the lungs open and preventing the lungs from collapsing. Nearly every hospital in the developed world has these devices but they are strikingly absent from facilities in developing countries. The bCPAP device is one of the preferred options for low resource settings as it is more cost effective but just as clinically effective as other CPAP devices.

" I saw how I could use my business and consulting skills as a force for good..."
I traveled to India and Bangladesh for in-country research interviewing Ministry of Health officials, medical device manufacturers and distributors, NGOs, clinicians, and professional associations to gain an understanding of the neonatal care landscape, the size of the scaling opportunity, and to identify any scaling barriers. The purpose of the assessment was to provide recommendations to help USAID determine what efforts would be most effective to help increase the number of bCPAP devices and, in turn, the number of premature babies saved in both countries.

What an experience! Not only was I able to be a tourist and enjoy the cultural experience, as it was my first time in both countries, but the work was extremely interesting. I saw how I could use my business and consulting skills as a force for good and actually see impact on a pretty large scale. To top it off, I found out I wasn’t alone in this desire to use a business mindset to think hard, fast, and strategically but in the space of global health. Turns out, there are many people doing this and it was exciting to work alongside them for a time.

This summer, I met a neonatologist who makes bCPAP devices out of spare parts, an NGO program director who is stretched thin trying to manage multiple stakeholders to keep projects on track, a medical device specialist at a for-profit company who is committed to serving those most in need, and a USAID resource who works tirelessly to help source and scale life-saving innovations. So, while the world witnessed great tragedies, I saw first-hand the good in humanity. I witnessed so many people utilizing their strengths to make a positive impact on the lives of people who need it the most. While many have doubts after recent events, this summer gave me great hope not only that I will be able to find a space for my talents and passions, but also great hope in humanity. So, for me, this was a “Summer of Optimism.”

Thank you to all at CASE, SEAD, and the SIF program for making this summer experience a possibility for me.

1 PATH CPAP Guide to Selection
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​Courtney Cobb is a second-year MBA candidate at the Fuqua School of Business concentrating in Social Entrepreneurship and serving as Co-President of the Association of Women in Business. She also participated in FCCP working on a consulting project for North Star Alliance in Kenya. Prior to Fuqua, Courtney was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to earn a Masters of Economic Science in European Public Affairs and Law from the University College Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. She also spent over three years with Deloitte Consulting in the Strategy and Operations practice focusing on the healthcare provider space. 

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White Paper: Shared Vision, Different Perspectives

8/9/2016

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This post by Alexandra LaForge originally appeared on Investors' Circle's blog. You can read it here.
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Shared Vision, Different Perspectives: Catalyzing Co-Investment into Early-Stage Impact Enterprises in Kenya
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How can we better fund early-stage impact enterprises in Kenya? With growing interest from US impact investors and an emerging class of local angel investors, strategic collaboration may be the key.
Download White Paper
International entrepreneurial hubs like Kenya have become attractive targets for impact investors looking for financially viable and impact-generating investment opportunities. The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)’s “The Landscape for Impact Investing in East Africa” reports that at least $240MM USD has been deployed as impact investments in Kenya specifically, with more than half of an additional $2.5B USD committed to East Africa likely headed there as well (“The Landscape for Impact Investing in East Africa,” 6). With a focus on global health, the USAID-supported Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) convenes interdisciplinary partners to identify, develop, and scale the innovative impact solutions vying for this capital. As the partnership’s capital connection provider, Investors’ Circle organized Investor Days: Nairobi 2016 to bring six US-based investors to Kenya – four in Africa for the first time – to explore and assess early-stage global health and broader impact investment opportunities there.


In addition to site visits with local social enterprises, Investor Days: Nairobi 2016 attendees engaged with local investors representing a new and growing class of asset holders in Kenya. The fifth-largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is expected to watch its millionaire (USD) demographic increase 74% in the next decade, at more than double the global rate (Ombok). As more Kenyans build wealth, some are moving from community-focused pooled giving and informal investment groups into early-stage venture investment strategies.


Despite a shared vision of early-stage investments that fuel social change and economic development in Kenya, it became apparent that US and local investors have different perspectives on impact interests and return expectations. What does this mean for catalyzing early-stage capital into Kenya? Is there an opportunity to collaborate or are these two groups fundamentally misaligned?
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A closer look into US impact investor and local angel investor perspectives reveals that differing skills and needs could create a complimentary approach to early-stage investing in Kenya if intentionally engaged. At the end of this paper, we suggest actions that investors can take to understand potential cross-cultural investment collaborators, build investment skills and co-investment relationships, and move capital into promising Kenyan impact enterprises.
Continue Reading Here
Join Investors' Circle Global Health Interest Group
The research described above was produced as part of the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD), in collaboration with the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke (CASE), Innovations in Healthcare, Investors' Circle and funded by USAID.
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The Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD)
A USAID Development Lab for Scaling Innovations in Global Health