The RAPID TRANSLATION AWARD honors a public-private partnership that has made a critical contribution to public health progress. This award is part of the suite of Outstanding Achievement in Public Health Awards, generously supported by Johnson & Johnson.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance helps vaccinate more than half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.

Gavi’s impact draws on the strengths of its core partners, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and plays a critical role in strengthening primary health care (PHC), bringing us closer to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), ensuring that no one is left behind.

Gavi shares the cost that implementing countries pay for vaccines, which has resulted in more than 561 vaccine introductions and campaigns, dramatically boosting immunization against virulent diseases. For example, in 2000, 3% of low-income countries had introduced nationally Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) vaccine that protects against diseases like pneumonia and meningitis. Today, Gavi has enabled all low-income countries to introduce this vaccine in their national programs. Progress on the third dose of Hib vaccine coverage, as well as with pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), has been so successful that the coverage rate in the 57 Gavi-supported countries has been higher than the global average coverage rate, for several years in a row. As of 2022, 19 countries had transitioned out of Gavi support and are fully self-financing vaccine programs introduced with Gavi support.