Making an impact in public health through philanthrocapitalism : the PaCT Project and ImPaCT Commercial Ventures

Abstract

Large-scale epidemiologic longitudinal cohort studies are a distinct area of epidemiology and public health. To conduct such studies, it often requires exorbitant resources. African collaborators and a team of Harvard scientists have initiated what is groundbreaking to the field of epidemiology and will be the largest investigations into lifestyle ever conducted in history: The Africa/Harvard School of Public Health Partnership for Cohort Research and Training (PaCT), a four-nation, large scale longitudinal cohort study comprising 500,000 study participants in Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Nigeria, investigating lifestyle factors and their relation to chronic diseases( i.e., cancer, heart diseases, mental illness, diabetes, etc.). This cohort study will be paired with an innovative philanthropic venture capital firm, ImPaCT Commercial Ventures. This business entity will be responsible for the commercialization of the intellectual property (IP) generated from the cohort study, decades-long collection of behavioral and genetic "Big Data" (primarily collected through mobile phones) from the study's 500,000 study participants. A select group of corporations will have semi-exclusive rights to the intellectual property to create and refine innovative products (goods and services) that help prevent chronic diseases and other public health threats in Africa, and they will also serve as limited partners in the ImPaCT Commercial Fund. This venture Fund will support a portfolio of entrepreneurial start-up ventures that also develop innovation around chronic disease prevention. ImPaCT will profit from this commercialization of IP and by equity ownership in the start-up ventures. ImPaCT, structured as a "Benefit" Corporation, will earmark some of its profit to help sustain the resource-intensive and expensive longitudinal cohort study.