Eric and Wendy Schmidt Announce Global Public Health Nonprofit to Improve Systems That Monitor, Identify, Respond to Health Threats
Contact: Swati Pandey, Schmidt Global Health
MENLO PARK, Calif.—Eric and Wendy Schmidt announced today Schmidt Global Health, a nonprofit aimed at improving public health by strengthening the systems and advancing the technology used to monitor, identify and respond to emerging disease threats worldwide.
Wendy Schmidt will address the World Health Summit in Berlin and a livestream audience online at 11 a.m. CEST on Tuesday, Oct. 13 to discuss the organization’s work, which expands the mission of the Schmidt Initiative for Long Covid (SILC) beyond a single disease. The organization will address the public health system itself by fostering collaboration across an international network, using technology to enhance analysis of data, communicating health information and coordinating emergency response. In the months leading up to its unveiling, Schmidt Global Health has boosted public health monitoring for the 2026 World Cup, preserved an essential database of Ebola statistics, symptoms and treatments, and supported measles response in the U.S. and the Pacific Islands.
“In a world as deeply interconnected as ours, in which challenges respect no borders, solutions need to be as swift, responsive and far-reaching as the problems themselves,” said Wendy Schmidt, president and co-founder of Schmidt Global Health. “Schmidt Global Health is embracing the challenge of answering an urgent international need in a rapid yet systemic way, working toward our philanthropic vision of a healthy, resilient and secure world for all.”
By partnering with public health professionals—across international, national, state and local governmental and nonprofit organizations—Schmidt Global Health works to improve public health systems to better monitor and respond to diseases, particularly those that represent emerging worldwide threats.
The organization arrives at a time of growing public health concerns due to shrinking foreign aid and looming potential pandemics.
“Philanthropy has an opportunity to fill a gap in the public health landscape to improve pandemic detection and response,” said John Redd, CEO of Schmidt Global Health. “We’re excited to Press Release expand the SILC model to take on more public health challenges at a time of immense need worldwide.”
In addition to continuing the work of SILC, Schmidt Global Health is pursuing its mission through four interconnected pillars of work, funding grantees across the following categories:
- Network: fostering collaboration across a global network of medical professionals, researchers and public health officials,
- Information and Analysis: applying AI, machine learning and other technologies to accelerate research and analysis and information sharing transparently, widely and in real time,
- Communication: making public health news accessible and actionable for communities, and
- Emergency Response: building increased resilience to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies.
“AI is already transforming the world of medicine, accelerating data collection and analysis, discovery of treatments and dissemination of information and care,” said Eric Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Global Health. “With Schmidt Global Health, we can deepen that impact and, we hope, prevent the next pandemic before it starts.”
Schmidt Global Health’s recent grantmaking includes:
- World Health Organization Health Emergencies Programme: The Health Emergencies Programme, guided by science, leads global efforts when crises occur, acting fast to bring expertise and partners together to save lives and keep health care available for communities. In the current crisis, it is scaling up support for the governments of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, strengthening surveillance, contact tracing, clinical preparedness and management, supply delivery, community engagement and cross-border preparedness.
- World Health Organization Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence (WHO Berlin Hub): The WHO Berlin Hub works to improve capacity and early threat detection through a combination of technical support, regional coordination, strong monitoring systems and training. Schmidt Global Health supports the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) platform, the world’s leading initiative for open-source intelligence for public health decision-making, and the GOARN Berlin Fellowship Programme.
- Syrian Field Epidemiology Training Program: The WHO Berlin Hub’s Syrian Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) supports the training of local epidemiologists in disease tracking, outbreak investigation, data analysis, rapid response and AI tools for public health.
- Project ECHO: Project ECHO is an innovative telementoring program that creates virtual Communities of Practice and convenes monthly Schmidt Global Health webinars translated simultaneously into multiple languages. Registration for upcoming webinars and access to past sessions is here.
- Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE): This U.S.-based organization of member states and territories representing public health epidemiologists works to improve coordination across public health jurisdictions for epidemiologic reporting and information sharing and provide expert technical advice and assistance to advance the field of applied epidemiology to maximize health. Schmidt Global Health funds CSTE’s Applied Epidemiology Fellowship and Leading Epidemiologists, Advancing Data (LEAD) Fellowship to support outbreak monitoring efforts and prepare for global events like the World Cup.
- Sierra Leone Ebola Database (SLED): A joint project of the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SLED preserves and manages treatment, testing, death, burial site, risk factor and symptom data from the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, essential to supporting families' ability to visit their loved ones' resting places and a vital source of research data for preparing for future outbreaks.
- Pacific Public Health Surveillance Network (PPHSN): PPHSN is a voluntary network of countries and organizations that detects and responds to public health emergencies, such as dengue fever, measles, typhoid, and cholera, across 22 Pacific Island countries and territories. Schmidt Global Health supports data collection and field epidemiology training, working with the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Pacific Island Health Officers Association (PIHOA).
- The Conversation: The Conversation is a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of experts for the public good. With the help of Schmidt Global Health, The Conversation translates peer-reviewed research into accessible journalism.The stories across The Conversation global network were read 550 million times in the past year.
- Clinical trial partners: Scientists at Nova Southeastern University, Western University and Scripps Research are testing, respectively, whether therapies approved by the FDA for other conditions can also provide relief from Long Covid symptoms, using AI to cross-reference drugs with the largest set of patient and proteomic data of any similar studies and conducting the first fully remote clinical trial for Long Covid. SILC funded the studies and data set.
About Schmidt Global Health
Schmidt Global Health strengthens public health systems globally by connecting clinical providers and researchers across a global network, identifying public health threats and coordinating response, using technology to enhance analysis of health data, and broadly communicating health findings. Schmidt Global Health evolved from the Schmidt Initiative for Long Covid, which was created by Eric and Wendy Schmidt in 2023.
