THE NTD INNOVATION PRIZE IS PAUSED FOR 2024
UPDATES EXPECTED IN 2025
Overview
The NTD Innovation Prize is designed to encourage and support creativity and ingenuity within the NTD space and to fund new ideas that could result in cost-effective, scalable and transformative positive impact.
American Leprosy Missions is interested in ideas that apply a new approach, tool or method to a persistent challenge. Ideas will be considered innovative if they disrupt the status quo, offering a feasible and adoptable solution to a problem in a way that avoids duplication, redundancy or inefficiencies. We want to hear from teams that then can turn ideas into action and impact. Read more about our approach to innovation.
“I think we still do not understand and practice innovation to the degree that is necessary for it to fulfill its role, especially in the leprosy world. We need to learn to think with an innovation mindset, which is different from a research mindset. ”
Partners
funding Partner: Novartis
Infectious diseases, including malaria, diarrheal disease, and neglected tropical infections kill over 8 million people each year, according to the Global Burden of Disease 2015 Study. In an effort to address this burden, Novartis is dedicated to finding new medicines that treat and, ultimately, contribute to the elimination of these pathogens. Our research and development efforts focus on diseases, such as malaria, leprosy, chagas disease, leishmaniasis, dengue, cryptosporidiosis and liver fluke.
Hosting Partner: Neglected Tropical Disease NGO Network
With over 70 members worldwide, the Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) NGO Network (NNN) is a forum for partners working together to improve health for the world's poorest populations and build a brighter future for all people. The NNN is built on partnerships: across diseases, between cross-cutting issues and with governments.
History
The NTD Innovation Prize was launched in 2019 by American Leprosy Missions to identify and support innovators with creative ideas to solve some of the most challenging issues posed by NTDs across the globe; 37 abstracts were submitted from 12 countries. The $25,000 prize was awarded at the 2019 NTD NGO Network (NNN) conference to Dr. Tito Melachio from the Center for Research in Infectious Diseases in Yaoundé, Cameroon and Joseph Pryce from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Since that first year, seven more winners have been recognized for their ideas to combat NTDs via innovations in data and analytics, diagnostics and digital health solutions, and mapping.
Explore our past finalists (see the “Prize” navigation menu) and the blog to see how the NTD Innovation Prize continues to further novel solutions to the challenges posed by NTDs.