August 1, 2018 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BOSTON - The Wagner Foundation, a private Boston-based foundation, announced today that it is supporting international medical charity Partners In Health with a $15 million grant.
The award represents the largest donation to any entity in the Wagner Foundation’s 13-year history, and will enable Partners In Health to launch a groundbreaking initiative to improve the health of impoverished people, especially women and children, in 10 countries around the world.
“We’re extremely excited to support Partners In Health,” says Wagner Foundation founder and CEO Charlotte Wagner. “Our goal of health equity, honoring the potential of all people, aligns perfectly with PIH’s mission to bring the fruits of modern medicine to the world’s most vulnerable.”
“This visionary gift from the Wagner Foundation will have a remarkable and sustained effect on the patients we serve and the care that we provide,” says Partners In Health CEO Gary Gottlieb. “It will undoubtedly help us to improve and save countless lives.”
The resources will go toward new healthcare programs, expanding PIH healthcare initiatives such as those aimed at ending maternal deaths in childbirth, and pioneering uses of data. It will support hi-tech healthcare data collection, analysis, and decision-making in health facilities in remote Liberia, for example, where many records are currently kept in moldering handwritten ledgers.
By supporting data infrastructure and expertise, Partners In Health and the Wagner Foundation are also eager to show that long-term investments in public healthcare systems, not just disaster or emergency responses, produce the best outcomes for patients, families, and communities.
The Wagner Foundation was established by Charlotte, a marketer, and Herbert S. Wagner, III, a finance executive, in 2005. The foundation works to build just and robust community throughout the country and abroad by supporting organizations that improve health equity, increase economic mobility, expand institutional fairness, and strive for cultural transformation. Internationally, it prioritizes healthcare for the communities most in need.
Partners In Health helps poor countries build and sustain public health systems. Founded in 1987 by Ophelia Dahl, Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Jim Kim, and friends, it has grown from a tiny organization in Haiti to a global nonprofit with 18,000 mostly local staff serving some of the most marginalized communities in 10 countries.
Partners In Health strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an antidote to despair.