PATH
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Access to good health too often depends on where we were born, our race, gender, ethnicity, age, class, and other factors. The scope of our work is vast—because that’s what it takes to tackle health problems caused by complex systemic inequities. Good health opens doors to education and economic opportunity for individuals and families. It strengthens communities and helps markets grow. It’s the foundation of a safer, more just, and more prosperous world for all of us. It moves humanity forward. COVID-19 has cost millions of lives, intensified inequities, and pushed health systems far beyond current capacities. The world wasn’t ready for this pandemic, but we can be ready for the next.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Devices
PATH distills cutting-edge medical technologies to their essence, then re-invents them as affordable, reliable, easy-to-use tools that work in places where resources are limited, power is scarce, or trained health care workers are few and far between. From designing a new diaphragm for women to strengthening markets for safe water devices, we identify, adapt, develop, and deliver technologies with the potential to achieve unprecedented wins for health. Our work on devices harnesses creative ideas, global talent, and local ingenuity. In collaboration with innovators, public- and private-sector partners, governments, communities, and civil society groups worldwide, we identify and produce devices and tools that improve care and address some of the leading health threats.
Diagnostics
In many parts of the world, health workers lack the tools to make an accurate diagnosis. This puts individuals, communities, and the world in danger, as incorrect diagnosis costs lives, and ineffectively treated disease can become a starting point for epidemics. We create affordable, portable, easy-to-use diagnostic tools and technologies that get results fast—so patients can get the right treatment at the right time, every time. Our fast, accurate diagnostic technologies detect and track a range of diseases, including cervical cancer, diabetes, HIV, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, polio, tuberculosis, and more.
Drugs
Every day in low-resource settings, people’s lives are cut short or severely compromised because they don’t have access to safe and effective medicines. The right drugs may be too costly, or they might not exist at all. PATH and our partners develop and advance affordable drugs to prevent and treat diseases that disproportionately affect people in low-income areas. We continually prove it’s possible to invent and advance affordable and effective medicines that prevent and treat diseases of poverty, like HIV, malaria, diarrheal disease, and infections—and to get them safely to people who need them.
System and service innovations
PATH puts innovation to work to strengthen health systems, encourage healthier behaviors, and increase access to affordable solutions. In all these efforts, we work within a country’s health systems, which increases our reach and helps ensure sustainability for future generations. We tap into our on-the-ground experience and networks of local partners to help countries and communities overcome barriers between people and the health services they need to thrive. We help improve infrastructure and supply systems, advocate for lifesaving policies and priorities, and train and equip health workers. And our digital health solutions are delivering on the promise of information technology to strengthen health systems.
Vaccines
PATH brings together public- and private-sector partners to advance vaccines through every stage of development—from discovery through delivery. We create ingenious technologies and strategies to help countries get them all the way to the people who need them and have reached billions of people worldwide with lifesaving vaccines and immunization technologies. Our Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access is currently working on dozens of projects targeting 20 diseases, including meningitis, pneumonia, human papillomavirus, and malaria.
COVID-19
For the COVID-19 outbreak, we are supporting the immediate response by expanding our existing
work to help countries be ready to deploy testing, surveillance, mitigation strategies, and solutions
to improve health systems. We’re also helping countries identifying health systems strengthening
opportunities that will address longer-term concerns.
Where we work
Awards
Four star rating 2010
Charity Navigator
Social Capitalist Award 2008
Fast Company magazine
Distinguished Leader Award 2008
LEAD Thurston County
Laureate 2009
Tech Museum of Innovation
Hilton Humanitarian Prize 2009
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
Laureate Impact Award 2016
Tech Museum of Innovation
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of lives improved
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
We define lives improved as: individuals who live longer (deaths averted), healthier (cases averted or disease controlled), or with increased protection from undesired health outcomes (e.g. immunized)
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
PATH’s vision is a world where health is within reach for everyone, no matter where they live.
We develop, introduce, and advance effective and affordable vaccines, drugs, devices, and diagnostics. And we create new approaches to strengthen global, national, and local health systems to ensure that all these tools reach the people who need them.
Our new strategy is designed to directly respond to the current crises we face as a global community, to the needs and priorities of our local partners, and to their resounding call for the continued transformation of our sector. Recognizing the historic moment our sector is in, we wanted to go further than developing a five-year strategic plan—we wanted to re-vision the role and function of the international nongovernmental organization (INGO) itself, beginning with the needs and priorities of the people we serve.
We will focus on three areas for our future:
Preparing for and responding to emerging health threats
Improving lives with science and technology
Increasing health system capacity and resilience
These holistic priorities represent an intentional and responsive shift away from the siloed health areas and piecemeal approaches that have limited our sector’s potential and slowed the rate of progress.
We will also answer to the clear and resounding call for INGOs like PATH to work differently and help move the sector toward a more equitable and effective model. Our new strategy goes beyond what we will do to reimagine how we will do it.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
We’ve identified four change strategies that will guide our efforts moving forward and help us become an even better agent of public health transformation.
Equity in health
Inclusive innovation
Community-focused priorities
Respectful partnerships
At PATH, we will still bring all the same capabilities and expertise to bear for our partners that we always have, but we will do so in an even more holistic and sustainable way—one that seeks to build and enhance local systems, to elevate local knowledge and expertise, and to safeguard everyone everywhere from the devastation of future pandemics like COVID-19.
Working toward equity in health must include challenging inequities in current global health programming; pursuing new approaches rooted in the determinants of health, human rights, and country and community leadership; building capacity; and recognizing the assets and strengths of all countries and regions, so that when health interventions are needed, they can be developed with local science, local technology, and local industry.
At PATH, we intend to lead by example. For 40 years, we’ve been a bridge between public and private, global and local. Now, we want to be a bridge to a better sector. If we can turn in this new direction—not only at PATH, but at all INGOs—then our shared future will be one in which the world’s health systems have the capacity to respond to global crises and effectively meet the needs of all people. We believe that is the only future worth pursuing.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
With more than four decades of experience, PATH transforms bold ideas into sustainable solutions that improve health and well-being for all. The breadth and depth of our work are unprecedented.
Our international team of 1,500 staff includes scientists, health experts, business leaders, engineers, advocates, and experts from dozens of other specialties. We develop, introduce, and advance vaccines, drugs, devices, diagnostics, digital tools, and innovative approaches to strengthen health systems worldwide. Our team shapes global conversations about health and technology, advises ministries of health, trains providers, scales teams of health care workers, and works on other fronts to break down barriers to good health.
We work in more than 70 countries and have 20 offices across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. More than half of our team members are based outside the United States, and 93 percent are from the countries where we work.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
For more than 40 years, PATH has pioneered new ways to save lives and improve health around the world. Our work addresses health from nearly every angle and reaches more than 150 million people every year.
Together with our partners, we’re developing and advancing ultra-sensitive diagnostics that will make diseases like polio and malaria history. We’re creating hyper-local networks to detect and treat hypertension, HIV, tuberculosis, breast cancer, and other diseases. We’re creating vaccines—and inventing technologies to get them safely to hundreds of millions of children who need them. We’re helping women everywhere access contraceptives so they can choose when and if to have children.
In other words, we’re reaching individuals, families, and communities with knowledge and tools to transform their own health and futures.
We’ve developed and adapted more than 100 health technologies. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, we:
• Responded to the oxygen crisis in India caused by the Delta variant in 2021, providing more than 1,000 oxygen concentrators and providing technical assistance to establish more than 1,200 PSA plants. We also made huge investments into every other aspect of the medical oxygen delivery process. For example, we supported more than 125,000 health facilities with planning, supplier sourcing, and equipment installation, and trained more than 2,000 health care workers.
• Contributed to bringing the first malaria vaccine to the world by partnering with regional researchers to develop a vaccine specifically for African children.
• Accelerated the development of vaccines—including NDV-HXP-S, a novel, affordable COVID-19 vaccine candidate that can be manufactured in flu vaccine facilities using chicken eggs. NDV-HXP-S is projected to be a game-changer for health systems unable to import mRNA vaccines because of the high cost.
• Established the Washington COVID-19 Biorepository and created a COVID-19 diagnostics benchmarking panel—both which sped the creation of quality assured diagnostics—and launched a set of COVID-19 diagnostic dashboards health officials can use to identify available tests and their regulatory approval status.
• Led the COVID-19 Respiratory Care Response Coordination project, an 18-month, international effort to support government decision-makers in the development and execution of comprehensive respiratory care plans to meet their country’s COVID-19 needs.
• Advocated for the COVAX Facility and contributed expertise to its design and operationalization. The Facility is a global mechanism for distributing COVID-19 vaccines. It sent its first doses to countries with low- and middle-income economies in March 2021.
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
PATH
Board of directorsas of 05/06/2022
David King
PATH Board Chair; Operating Partner, Pritzker Private Capital / United States
Jo Addy
David King
Ireena Vittal
Yehong Zhang
Bruce McNamer
Deanna Oppenheimer
Joel Holsinger
Helena Wayth
John-Arne Rottingen
Lisa Anderson
Beth Galetti
Sanford Melzer
Rachel Sibande
Abayomi Sule
Lutz Hegemann
Fredrick Namenya Were
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
Equity strategies
Last updated: 12/30/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We measure and then disaggregate job satisfaction and retention data by race, function, level, and/or team.