Since its inception in 2016, the Global Health Innovation Grants (GHIG) program—established by The Pfizer Foundation and implemented in partnership with Duke University’s Innovations in Healthcare (IiH)—has served as a catalytic platform for healthcare delivery innovation in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Over ten years, the GHIG program has funded 47 organizations across 30 countries, disbursing $15.5 million in grant funding, and directly reaching 14.5 million patients, vaccinating more than 2.8 million individuals, training 32,000+ healthcare workers, and extending access to 25.1 million people.
Beyond the numbers, GHIG grantees have scaled innovations across geographies, forged new partnerships, and catalyzed systemic improvements in primary and community care, maternal and child health, digital health, and infectious disease management. When GHIG was launched a decade ago, there were limited pathways for scaling healthcare delivery innovations in LMICs. While other funders supported research and development (R&D) and early pilots, there was a glaring gap: flexible, catalytic funding that could help organizations adapt, experiment, and build models for scale. GHIG aimed to fill that space, coupling modest but nimble grants with technical assistance from IiH. Stakeholder interviews confirm GHIG’s role as both a validator and accelerator, providing legitimacy, networks, and flexible funding that allowed grantees to test, adapt, and grow.
As GHIG concludes its tenth year, this report synthesizes contributions to and impact on healthcare systems and insights from structured interviews with 22 stakeholders. It aims to provide evidence-based lessons for innovators, funders, and policymakers considering and supporting the scale and sustainability of innovations. While the scope of this review is deliberately backward-looking—ten years of practice, progress, and proof—our guiding principle is grounded in learning and adaptation to be better for what comes next. We enter the next decade in a funding climate that is leaner and less forgiving; every dollar must now carry more weight and move with greater purpose. That is why these lessons matter more than ever. These findings will be shared with global health stakeholders, offering insights on investing in health innovators based in LMICs and offering insights on designing effective grant programs. We hope this report is more than a retrospective; it is a guide for making each future global health dollar smarter, more catalytic, and more durable in the systems that need it most.