Words by Smiley Team
Launched by Dame Sally Davies, former Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for the United Kingdom, The Trinity Challenge will bring together the world’s best and brightest minds and global organisations to better protect the world against health emergencies.
The Trinity Challenge sets a series of urgent questions to harness the potential of data and analytics to learn and share lessons from the great innovations made to combat Covid-19 and to build resilience against future health emergencies. £10M of funding will be made available to Challenge Teams to support and scale their innovations across areas including economics, behavioural sciences, and epidemiology.
Convened by Dame Sally Davies in her role as Master of Trinity College, at the University of Cambridge, The Trinity Challenge has 22 Founding Members representing a diverse coalition of world leading organisations across the private, public and social sectors, united by the common aim of using data and advanced analytics to develop insights and practical actions to contribute to a world better protected from health emergencies.
The Founding Members are: Aviva, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Brunswick Group, University of Cambridge, Discovery Limited, Facebook, Global Virome Project, Google, GSK, HKUMed, Imperial College London, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Internews, Legal and General, LSE, McKinsey and Company, Microsoft, Northeastern University, Optum, Reckitt Benckiser, Tencent, Zenysis Technology.
The global health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 have laid bare our current inability to identify, respond to and recover from health emergencies.
“There will be another COVID-19, and there is an opportunity for the international community to learn lessons now and prepare for the future." Dame Sally Davies commented.
"The Trinity Challenge is a recognition by business, academia and philanthropy of the need for new, breakthrough ideas and approaches to beat the next pandemic. My career has been inspired by making sure all people, everywhere, have the best possible life chances. Health is integral to that, and we are seeing this now more than ever.We need to come together to make sure this never happens again."
"We need new ways of working, new partnerships, new ideas, and believe that together this strong and growing coalition can and will generate acts that protect and improve lives and livelihoods everywhere.”
From anywhere in the world, Challenge Teams will be able to partner with global experts, drawing on their resources and support.
The Global Virome Project, who have been driving collaborative scientific initiatives to discover viral threats and stop future pandemics for over 10 years, highlight how important the partnership and collaboration aspect of the Challenge is, stating:
“The Trinity Challenge is a call to action that challenges us to think differently and act differently.
We at the Global Virome Project are enthusiastic about the opportunity the Trinity Challenge has created to forge new partners, stimulate novel ideas and generate fresh energy so that we can collectively address the challenges posed by the COVID19 pandemic while also better preparing the world to address all the threats to come.”
The Trinity Challenge is designed around sourcing and developing impact-led solutions that reflect the holistic nature of future health emergencies. Challenge Teams will develop changemaking ideas, tools and insights relevant to each of the three stages of these emergencies from identification, response and recovery.
You can register your interest to participate in The Trinity Challenge at on the website at https://thetrinitychallenge.org. Formal applications will open in early October. The submission period will close in January 2021
