Three Ways the Gates Foundation is Supporting the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals

On the margins of the U.N. General Assembly this year — where an underlying theme was the troubling stalled state of advancement on most of the governing body’s Sustainable Development Goals — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation backed a set of interventions to boost progress, representing commitments of more than $200 million.

Here are the details on three ways the Gates Foundation is supporting the SDGs, including the latest report that keeps score on progress, major investments in maternal and child health targets, and an awards program intended to inspire and celebrate changemakers from all corners of the world.

Keeping score

After world leaders agreed to the 17 SDGs in 2015, the foundation created an initiative called Goalkeepers to track and highlight progress toward the goals. The foundation’s latest Goalkeepers Report, which measures variables like poverty, food security and climate, continued to show lagging progress on nearly all levels as the SDGs reach the halfway point to 2030, the year they wrap.

It particularly highlighted two off-track targets: maternal health and neonatal and child health, along with new knowledge gained in the past decade that could help turn things around. The goal of Target 3.1, for example, is to reduce the global maternal mortality rate to 70 per 100,000 live births. Though the rate now hovers at nearly double that, research has revealed low-cost interventions that can help change the trajectory if brought to scale.

A case in point: The No. 1 cause of maternal death is postpartum hemorrhage. The report shares updates on a few effective, low-cost interventions like a V-shaped plastic drape that can indicate danger, and five simultaneous actions to help stop the bleeding. Forty percent of PPH cases stem from anemia that can be treated with pre-natal vitamins in mild cases, and a new IV drip that speeds iron to mothers in acute situations. And the sepsis that accounts for a quarter of all maternal deaths in the U.S. alone can be stopped in its tracks by administering the antibiotic azithromycin during labor.

Timely investments

The main focus of Gates’ funding response at UNGA this year addressed what it characterized as an “alarming reversal in progress” on Global Goal 3. Two major commitments totaling $200 million centered on maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH), issues long championed by Melinda French Gates.

MNCH is a foundation focus area within its gender equality work, a portfolio that boasts a five-year, $2.1 billion commitment to advancing women’s economic power and health outcomes, a pledge made in 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum that carries through to 2026. More recently, the foundation committed $370 million to support MNCH though 2027, with an emphasis on new tools and interventions. The end-to-end nature of the pledge begins with generating evidence to create a greater understanding of the conditions that stop development. From there, it provides the resources to test new treatments and innovations, and advocates for evidence-based policies and programs to improve outcomes.

The idea of choice is also central to the foundation’s MNCH work. Gates sees family planning as an important path to empowerment that allows women and girls to make their own healthcare decisions and set their own timelines on life choices, from education to work and motherhood. Its family planning work has resulted in financial commitments of nearly $300 million annually from 2001 to 2030.

The grants the Gates Foundation announced during UNGA support both accessibility and choice.

Gates invested up to $100 million in the United Nations Population Fund, or UNPFA, the U.N.’s sexual and reproductive health agency. Funding specifically supports UNFPA Supplies Partnerships, which helps women take control of their bodies and futures in more than 150 countries via unmet family planning needs and maternal health services.

Now in the third phase of working toward the SDG and U.N. Decade of Actions goals, the UNFPA partnership has prioritized delivering a host of modern family planning contraceptives and maternal health supplies to women in low- and middle-income countries. Since its launch in 2008, UNFPA reports that its work at that level has resulted in the prevention of nearly 90 million unintended pregnancies and 1.6 million child deaths.

Gates also committed funds to scale efforts boosting newborn and child health though Unitaid, which works to match the world’s best health products with need. A funder of the organization since its inception in 2006, Gates’ initial five-year, $50 million commitment to Unitaid came to a close last year.

During UNGA, it doubled down on that support with a pledge of $100 million over the next five years. A significant portion is expected to focus on MNCH, pending board evaluation and approval in 2024.

Funding is meant to shorten the transition times between approved new lifesaving options and their widespread adoption. As an example, truncated timeframes will help keep women and infants from dying due to the lack of simple treatments like medical oxygen.

Shining a Light on Progress

Though its giving is typically rooted in facts and figures, Gates has stated that it intends to showcase what data doesn’t often reflect when it comes to SDG progress — human ingenuity.

For the second year, the Gates Foundation harnessed the power of positive reinforcement by hosting the Goalkeepers Global Goals Awards, a “tentpole” timeout to reflect on SDG awareness and accountability and shine a light on inspirational models of progress. The event celebrated six Global Goals Award winners this year.

The Campaign Award — which recognizes initiatives that inspire lasting change — went to the Farmlink Project, a network of more than 600 student fellows and volunteers that’s boosted food equity in the U.S. by 83 million meals and 130 million pounds of food.

A Changemaker Award recognizing work grounded in personal experiences went to Ashu Martha Agbornyenty for reducing maternal mortality in Cameroon via the For Mom & Baby Foundation. The organization works in midwifery, another major component of Gates’ strategies, as demonstrated by a nearly $1 million commitment to the International Confederation of Midwives in 2021.

And the Goalkeepers Progress Award, which celebrates initiatives based in science, technology or business, was awarded to the Ethiopian social entrepreneur Eden Tadesse for founding Invicta, an online platform that supports digital financial inclusion, skills development and job opportunities for urban refugees across 90 countries.

Each of the three winners received an award of $20,000.

Three other recipients are more widely known. Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida received the Global Goalkeeper Award for his work championing fair and equitable universal health coverage for all, and his leadership in developing the architecture necessary to prevent future global pandemics.

And two special awards recognized former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s body of work in global health and development with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and musician and activist Bono with the Goalkeepers Voice Award for his decades spent building a movement to eradicate extreme poverty and AIDS.

The clock is ticking. Meeting the SDGs will take all of philanthropy’s best efforts. But the situation isn’t all dire, said Gates CEO Mark Suzman. “We also see where innovation, investment and extraordinary work of passionate changemakers around the world have the potential of turning the tide, saving the lives of 2 million mothers and babies by 2030.”

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