The Stavros Niarchos Foundation has committed to supporting La Isla Foundation’s (LIF) operations over the next three years.

The grant allows LIF to strengthen its work to end Chronic Kidney Disease of non-Traditional Causes (CKDnT) worldwide by mobilizing its network of health, climate, industry, and media experts.

“Operations funding is essential in liberating the LIF team to leverage the cutting edge work being done to confront CKDnT globally,” said Jason Glaser, LIF CEO. “SNF’s team and network have helped us get closer to our goals and have provided us with the platform for our next great leap as an organization.”

The grant will fund ongoing work and future engagement to support five programs:

1. The DEGREE Initiative: Understanding the scope, scale and etiology of CKDnT through standardized prevalence studies around the world

2. The Worker Health and Efficiency (WE) Program: Planning and executing workplace interventions to protect at-risk individuals

3. Policy recommendations and communications: Sourcing evidence-based conclusions from leading research findings to urge pragmatic solutions

4. Economic impact studies: Investigating the burden of CKDnT in order to inform collaborations with government and international institutions

5. Fiscal sponsorship of partner organizations: Ensuring lines of support and a voice for those confronting CKDnT in locales around the world

“As part of a larger network of leading nephrologists hailing from the United States and Europe, La Isla Foundation encourages global outreach surrounding the social, economic, and political impacts of nephropathies, specifically CKDnT. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is proud to partner with La Isla Foundation to help facilitate a forum of international dialogue uniting research with practice,” said Kira Pritchard, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Program Officer. “An excellent example is La Isla Foundation’s Worker Health and Efficiency Program, which aims to shape labor policies and practices through the lens of public health and human rights. It is one of five core initiatives championed by La Isla Foundation that ultimately lends a voice to thousands of previously silenced marginalized populations afflicted by this fatal epidemic.”

By the end of the SNF grant commitment in 2019, LIF anticipates intensified funding strategies, enabling it to continue its already vital work.

Specific goals include verification of the WE Program protocol and training materials; publication of six research papers on physiology, climate, etiology, and economic burden of CKDnT, and access to care; developing the La Isla Network website, which will function as a data hub and information platform for CKDnT; and working with governments to ensure labor and trade policies that protect workers and communities.

LIF also plans to design workplace interventions suitable for other at-risk industries, including mining and construction; and to implement the DEGREE Initiative in Africa, Southeast and South Asia, USA, South America, and Mesoamerica. LIF is introducing the WE Program to industry in Mexico, and Southeast Asia; as well as initiating an economic analysis of the burden of disease in Mesoamerica and beyond.

Throughout this process, LIF will collaborate with SNF in order to mutually leverage the organizations’ exceptional networks to help end the CKDnT epidemic.

 

About the Stavros Niarchos Foundation

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation is one of the world’s leading private international philanthropic organizations, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and sports, and social welfare. The Foundation funds organizations and projects that are expected to achieve a broad, lasting and positive impact for society at large, focusing on vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly, and also exhibit strong leadership and sound management. The Foundation also seeks actively to support projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships as an effective means for serving public welfare.

2016 marks the twentieth year of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s global philanthropic activity. Since 1996, the SNF has made grant commitments of $1.8 billion / €1.5 billion, through 3,526 grants to nonprofit organizations in 111 nations around the world. Follow SNF on Facebook and Twitter.