“Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development” taught the U.S. Agency for International Development a couple of things.
It became clear that the grand challenge model worked well as a way to rapidly source and deploy innovations, but also that the midst of an outbreak was not the best time to call for those ideas, said Wendy Taylor, director of the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact at USAID. With a new grand challenge responding to the Zika outbreak, USAID is putting those lessons to practice, funding innovations with applications beyond Zika, including threats that have yet to be identified.
“We want to make sure we aren’t fighting tomorrow’s outbreaks with yesterday’s tools,” Taylor told Devex.
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About the author
Catherine Cheneycatherinecheney
Catherine Cheney is the Senior Editor for Special Coverage at Devex. She leads the editorial vision of Devex’s news events and editorial coverage of key moments on the global development calendar. Catherine joined Devex as a reporter, focusing on technology and innovation in making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to joining Devex, Catherine earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University, and worked as a web producer for POLITICO, a reporter for World Politics Review, and special projects editor at NationSwell. She has reported domestically and internationally for outlets including The Atlantic and the Washington Post. Catherine also works for the Solutions Journalism Network, a non profit organization that supports journalists and news organizations to report on responses to problems.
