Some of the ways that MSD supports development initiatives

Corporate philanthropy is a rising force in the world of development, and pharmaceutical companies have proven to be among the most generous funders. One major pharmaceutical company is MSD — known as Merck in the U.S. and Canada — which, among other things, manufactures Mectizan, used to treat river blindness, and has a number of different initiatives to support development, through its social impact and sustainability function. Devex was joined by Allison Goldberg, president of the MSD Foundation, and Jacque Caglia, head of MSD for Mothers. Both those initiatives form part of a wider social impact and sustainability function within MSD, which also carries out several other activities, including impact investment work and a program of Mectizan donations in low- and middle-income countries. Last year, the program donated more than 400 million treatments, and the program has delivered more than 5 billion over the course of its existence. “Allison and I can’t stress enough that we’re all part of the same team, part of the same company,” Caglia said. “And so at the highest level, we share the same goals, and we share the same overall strategy related to people that we’re working to reach, to help get them connected to care.” Both organizations and the wider function as a whole emphasize the importance of a partnership approach. “Partnership is a big part of how we operate,” Goldberg said. “It’s the only way we operate. We look for opportunities through our collaborations to operate in order to be catalytic in many ways. So whether that be thinking about ways that we can provide support to fill a gap in care, or to strengthen a part of the health system, or to help scale a proven or experimental model, we work through partnership.” The two organizations work toward the same goals in different ways. The MSD Foundation is an independent nonprofit, supported by MSD and focused on community grantmaking to improve people’s access to health. That involves strengthening health systems, improving the quality of care delivery, and helping to overcome barriers to access to care. The foundation has an international focus, often working on cross-country initiatives, Goldberg said, and it funds a wide range of sizes of organizations. One way that it works is by issuing open calls for proposals, typically once a year. The current round is called Solutions for Healthy Communities, and the winners of that are likely to be announced at the start of 2026, with another call likely to come at some point next year. “The intent of that is to prioritize those solutions that have been led by local stakeholders to meet local needs and make priority investments in their community to overcome barriers to improving access to health,” Goldberg said. MSD for Mothers MSD for Mothers is an initiative launched by the company in 2011 to tackle preventable maternal deaths. It is primarily focused on work in four countries — India, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States — but it has a global grants program, which has enabled it to work in more than 70 countries. “We’re very focused on identifying opportunities to support education and awareness,” Caglia said, “as well as to support better connectivity to care before pregnancy, during the prenatal period around labor and delivery, as well as for that first year after the baby arrives in the postnatal period.” She said the initiative was focused on quality within health systems. “We firmly believe that care should be high quality everywhere,” she said, “no matter where a patient seeks care in their community — in a large urban center, in a rural environment, in the public sector, in the private sector.” In particular, she said, one emphasis was on postpartum hemorrhaging, which in many parts of the world is a leading cause of death in childbirth. Unlike the MSD Foundation, MSD for Mothers does not accept unsolicited donations. What next? Goldberg was confident that her organization would continue on the same track despite the current difficult environment in the United States “This is a moment where the private sector has a chance to stand up,” she said, “and as the public sector investments become more constrained, we continue to think about ways how we can continue to sustain some of the impact that we’ve made in some of our investments — especially where others can’t.” Caglia echoed these sentiments. “I think that the shifts in the external environment really are creating a recipe for more creativity and more collaboration,” she said. “Allison and I talk frequently about being folks who view situations with the glass half full, and recognizing the rate, the weight, and the value of the contributions that a company like ours is able to make.” Want more briefings like this? Let us know — and stay tuned for upcoming live conversations here.