A mother and her baby seek care from a healthcare provider, both part of the Akwaaba Health Project in the Eastern Region of Ghana

Health

Improving the health of vulnerable communities, children and young people

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Health is at the heart of all prosperity

Without health, all other advancement is largely irrelevant. Children and young people need to be healthy to learn, realize their potential and thrive later as adults. Well-functioning, patient-centered health systems are an integral part of fighting poverty and promoting a thriving economy. Health inequities lead to avoidable death and disability, especially among the poorest and most marginalized populations. Therefore, contributing to child health is both a moral and economic imperative.

Despite this, half of the world’s population lack access to essential health services.1 Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest child mortality rate in the world, in some places 15 times higher than in high-income countries.2 And wealth can also determine access to healthcare within countries and individual cities.

Let’s look at how we can improve the health and well-being of the most vulnerable children and turn them into adults who will help their societies grow.

A mother kissing a young child

The challenges we face

Bridging distances

3.16 billion people cannot reach a healthcare facility by foot within one hour.3

Raising quality

Quality of care has eclipsed access as a driver of survival, it is the key to addressing persistent maternal and child mortality.4

Building trust

Mistrust of the health system and social and gender norms inhibit access to care.

Reducing costs

Out-of-pocket health spending dragged 344 million people further into extreme poverty.5

A mother in Africa hugs her baby

Taking action

UBS Optimus Foundation has supported organizations working in the primary healthcare space for over a decade. We build on strong partnerships to cultivate a portfolio of grants and investments with high potential for impact at scale.

The health portfolio aims to scale quality primary healthcare that improves the health of the world’s most vulnerable communities, especially children and mothers. Our work is grounded in the belief that quality primary care holds the greatest potential to improve child and maternal health outcomes, achieve better health equity, and provide more holistic care in a cost-effective way. Affordable primary addresses up to 90% of a person’s healthcare needs over their lifetime and an estimated 60 million deaths in low- and middle-income countries can be averted by scaling up access to quality primary healthcare by 20306.

We look for innovative, patient-centered, integrated primary care delivery models that address a wide range of health needs across the continuum of care – with the aim to scale through government institutionalization or monetization of services. Therefore, we deploy our philanthropic capital flexibly using a wide range of investment tools across the impact spectrum.

Sea beyond the blue guide cover

Want to learn more?

Want to learn more about how to have an impact towards better health for all? Download the guide Picture of health to read more about the issues and solutions, and learn from experts and other philanthropists. Inside, you’ll find concrete tips on how to improve our health system, enable the workforce, prevent the next pandemic, conduct sustainable finance solutions and much more.

Our priority areas

Beds in a hospital ward to represent primary healthcare and optimus health

Access to quality primary healthcare

Scaling up quality, affordable primary healthcare holds the greatest potential to improve children’s and mother’s health, leading to reduced rates of under-five, neonatal, and maternal mortality. We are focusing on patient-centered care and prioritize integrated and data-driven primary healthcare models that address a wide range of health needs across the continuum of care.

Mental health

The UBS Optimus foundation is developing a comprehensive social impact strategy for mental health, with plans to launch the foundation initiative by the end of 2024. In alignment with UBSOF’s thematic priorities – health, education and climate – your philanthropy funds can help address key challenges in global mental health so that young people and their families can thrive in communities where mental health challenges are understood and managed effectively

Special initiative: Peadiatric cancer

In collaboration with UBS Global Wealth Management UBS Optimus Foundation is a beneficiary of the Oncology Impact Fund I and II (OIF). We are supporting a strategic portfolio of programs to sustainably address the biggest barriers to access to diagnosis and treatment in lower-income countries, i.e. lack of peadiatric oncology specialists and cost of treatment.

 

Our approach

With our health portfolio, our mission is to scale quality primary healthcare that improves the health of the world’s most vulnerable children

Problems

Lack of access to basic quality primary healthcare

Low-quality care provided in primary facilities

  • Lack of trained and motivated personnel, essential medicines and supplies, and even electricity and running water
  • When patients anticipate receiving low-quality care, they avoid the system altogether
  • Quality of care is difficult to measure due to lack of uniform standards and metrics

2. Fragmented systems lead to fragmented care

  • Lack of continuity of care further undermines quality of care. Care from multiple providers in various places is often not coordinated, complementary, and responsive to a patient’s changing needs
  • Technology is viewed as an end rather than a means and very few digital health tools are interoperable or being used at scale

3. Inadequate funding for primary health care

  • Limited public spending due to low levels of government revenue generation and failure to prioritize health in government budgets
  • Limited focus on building government capacity to fund and operate PHC
  • Donors tend to finance targeted disease-specific services rather than integrated primary care
  • Limited financing for primary care by VCs or impact investors due to perceived lack of sufficient return

Solutions

1. Patient centricity​

Focusing on patient-centered care and monitoring of patient experience, fostering trust in the healthcare system to improve utilization, treatment adherence, and health outcomes.

2. Integrated care​

Prioritizing integrated and data-driven primary healthcare models that address a wide range of health needs across the continuum of care.

3. Affordability of care​

Supporting the scale up of primary healthcare models that are affordable for the health system and patients and accelerating access to healthcare financing mechanisms for patients.

Outcomes

A doctor caring for a child for optimus health

Primary healthcare holds the greatest potential to improve children’s health

1. Increased affordability of patient-centered care

2. Reduced under-5 mortality​

3. Reduced maternal mortality

Our impact

For over more than ten years our programs have helped increase access to healthcare and improve the quality of health services in communities, clinics, and hospitals. In 2023, our health portfolio includes:

  • 0 million

    individuals reached

  • 0

    countries

  • 0

    health facilities supported

  • 0 million

    USD grant / ​social investments value​

Our programs

Healthy Learners

Smiling school children in Africa

Healthy Learners trains teachers to become school health workers (SHWs) who ensure timely diagnosis and treatment for school-aged children, reducing sickness and absenteeism. SHWs make preliminary diagnoses and triage decisions, treating mild conditions at school while making referrals to associated clinics for more severe conditions. The clinics, meanwhile, offer expedited care to those patients referred by SHWs. This collaborative approach results in better health outcomes, improved attendance, and a reduction in illness-related complications, all at an ongoing annual cost of less than USD 1.51 per child, less than ~1% of Zambia’s expenditure on education for primary school children. As of June 2024 Healthy Learners has trained over 4,000 SHW who serve more than 850,000 children across 480 public schools.

Healthy Learners won the UBS Optimus Foundation COVID Prize competition in 2021 and helped Zambia to be one of the first countries on the continent to reopen schools safely. Healthy Learners is at a crucial inflection point with the model being adopted as policy by the Ministry of Education of Zambia, which concurrently established a School Health and Nutrition Department responsible for supporting the scale-up and management of the program. 

Africa Frontline First

Africa Frontline first is one of UBS Optimus Foundation programs

Africa Frontline First (AFF) aims to institutionalize and scale 200,000 professionalized community health workers (CHWs) across 10 African countries by 2030. AFF is a collaborative initiative that supports the financing and strengthening of integrated and sustainable community health service delivery to achieve health for all.

The UBS Optimus Foundation is providing financial and technical support to AFF to incorporate outcome-based funding design and identify AFF countries most fit to develop outcome-based elements into their financing plans. Ultimately, this will help mobilize new and better sources of financing for countries’ community health systems.

Muso

Women in Africa holding a small child part of UBS Optimus Foundation programs

Traditional care systems are not meeting the needs of most patients living in poverty, resulting in millions of preventable deaths annually. Early access can avert nearly all deaths of children under five years old. Muso has documented rapid health improvements from its proactive care model, including sustaining a rate of child death in Mali lower than any country in sub- Saharan Africa for five years running.

Three core program components shrink the time from symptom onset to treatment. Community healthcare workers (CHWs) proactively search for households with pregnant mothers and children, provide care in the home and refer more complex cases to expanded government-run health centers. In 2023, Muso advocated in Mali for the successful recognition of CHWs as an official part of the health system. And in Côte D’Ivoire, Muso supported a new strategic plan for community health with concrete steps towards the professionalization of CHWs, with pay in alignment with the national minimum wage.

Integrate Health

Integrate Health saves lives in the world’s most neglected communities by integrating professional community health workers with improved care in public clinics. This powerful combination transforms the poorest-performing government clinics into lifesaving centers of excellence. Integrate Health currently serves more than 200,000 people through several health centers across Togo. Integrate Health is not only expanding access for patients but also enhancing the quality of primary healthcare delivered Over three years, they've observed a 50 percent reduction in child mortality in the pilot communities where Integrate Health works. Building on this success, Integrate Health has expanded significantly in Togo and replicated the model to Guinea. In a significant step toward long-term sustainability, Integrate Health successfully transferred key activities of the Integrated Primary Care Program to the Kozah district health authorities in 2023.

Karma Healthcare (Impact Investment)

Two people smilingon a video call at Karma healthcare in India

Significant gaps exist in the effective delivery of reliable and affordable healthcare facilities in rural India, where close to 900 million people live. According to studies, 75% of India’s health infrastructure is concentrated in urban areas where only 27% of the population lives7. Prompt and appropriate care could reduce maternal and child deaths significantly. Karma Primary Healthcare is an impact-driven, technology-enabled startup with a vision to make primary healthcare more accessible, equitable, integrated, and evidence-based. Karma Healthcare operates e-Doctor clinics providing nurse-assisted online medical consultations by qualified doctors, diagnostic services and referral services to underserved communities in semi-urban and rural India. Founded in 2014, Karma has expanded its assisted telemedicine model to over 50 locations across 8 states in India. The company has witnessed a threefold increase in its patient base over the last three years impacting more than 350,000 lives with validated positive health outcomes.

Jacaranda Maternity (Impact Investment)

A woman and her newborn baby smiling at a Jacaranda Maternity facility

Jacaranda Maternity is a social enterprise that provides high quality, affordable, respectful family health care services in Kenya. Jacaranda Maternity runs a chain of maternity hospitals and facilitated over 10,000 successful deliveries and only 4 neonatal deaths per 1,000 deliveries to date. The price per delivery is affordable for mothers without health insurance or covered only by public health insurance. 

Get inspired

Ari Johnson, CEO, Muso

With Muso’s proactive care model, community health workers (CHWs) are the frontline changemakers. CHWs go door-to-door to search for patients and connect them to lifesaving services. Muso designed and built 360º Supervision, to assess and support CHWs from multiple angles: interviews with patients, direct observation, dashboard analytics, group supervision and 1:1 coaching. Detailed cost estimating of 360º Supervision shows that this strategy is scalable at a low cost. Unique to the Muso supervision model are solo visits by the supervisor to patient homes to collect patient feedback on the CHW and verify CHW reporting.

Muso is a UBS Optimus Foundation partner.

Meet Angela from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

We have been working with World Child Cancer and their partner Korle Bu Teaching Hospital’s Centre of Excellence in Ghana to support them in transforming child cancer care. Learn how by spending a few minutes with Augusta Asiedu-Lartey, a Child Life Specialist, as she shares more about her daily work looking after the mental and physical wellbeing of children and their caregivers during treatment there.

World Child Cancer is a UBS Optimus Foundation partner.

Meet our team

Photo of Marissa Lefflerand Cédrine Gisin

Marissa Leffler (right) and Cédrine Gisin (left) lead health investments across the UBS Optimus Foundation ‘capital stack’ including grantmaking, debt and equity, and outcomes-based financing instruments. They set the Foundation’s investment strategy and cultivate a portfolio to contribute towards measurable impact on children’s health. The team also co-leads the Foundation’s Emergency Response efforts with the aim of providing immediate relief and supporting longer-term recovery for children affected by humanitarian crises.

Prior to UBS, Marissa spent over 10 years at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where she most recently served as the Innovation Team Leader in the Global Health Center for Innovation and Impact, a center of excellence established to accelerate the development, introduction, and scale up of priority global health interventions. Marissa also has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Prior to UBS, Cédrine spent over two years in the life science industry. At Novartis, she most recently worked in Corporate Responsibility Strategy. She graduated from the University of St.Gallen with a Master's degree in Business Innovation. During her studies she conducted research on scaling mobile health innovations in low and middle income countries.

Want to learn more?

Guide

Better health for all

Want to learn more about how to have an impact towards better health for all? Download the guide to read more about the issues and solutions, and learn from experts and other philanthropists. Inside, you’ll find concrete tips on how to improve our health system, enable the workforce, prevent the next pandemic, conduct sustainable finance solutions and much more.

Article

Closing the pediatric cancer survival gap

Happy mother and child in a child cancer hospital

A conversation with World Child Cancer
When an organization such as World Child Cancer receives support, it initiates a chain that touches numerous lives, potentially for generations. Learn more in this article.

1 McNeill, K., Jacobs, C. (2019). Half of the world’s population lack access to essential health services – are we doing enough? World Economic Forum.
2 World Health Organization (2020). Child health. Last consulted: July 22, 2024
3 Weiss, D. J., et al. (2020). Global maps of travel time to healthcare facilities. Nature Medicine, 26(12), 1835–1838
4https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(18)30386-3/fulltext Last consulted: July 23, 2024.
5 World Health Organization. Universal Health Coverage. Last consulted: July 23, 2024.
6https://www.exemplars.health/topics/primary health care
7 The Times of India, 2023, What role can technology play in improving the health infrastructure of India.

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Get in touch with us for more information on how to get involved and support our partner programs.