Improving lives through invention

NEST360° Initiative Harnesses Invention to Solve Global Health Challenges

The Lemelson Foundation is proud to announce our contribution to the launch of NEST360°, a new multi-organization partnership aimed at making a lasting impact on maternal and newborn health in low-resource settings.

Current data shows that around 28 in every 1,000 babies in Sub-Saharan Africa die in the first month of life. The NEST360° initiative will support the UN Sustainable Development Goal target of halving this number by 2030.

The partnership – which includes the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Rice University’s Rice 360° Institute for Global Health and the Malawi College of Medicine, as well as leading institutions across Africa – will develop and deploy a bundle of affordable medical devices and diagnostics to address the key issues facing newborns.

Other funders of NEST360° include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and The ELMA Foundation.

The Lemelson Foundation has long supported Rice 360°’s initiative to engage engineering students in solving global health challenges. Its program utilizes Invention Education and a bidirectional partnership between Rice University and Malawi Polytechnic, the University of Malawi Medical School and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, to research and implement innovative design solutions to improve newborn health and survival.

This collaboration between students and faculty and health care professionals aims to create a sustainable pipeline of inventors and engineers developing local solutions to pressing challenges.

Learn more about the Foundation’s partnership with the Rice360° program in this video:

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