The Pioneer Portfolio aims to support novel, high-return ideas that may have far-reaching impact on people's health, the quality of care they receive and the systems through which that care is provided.

The Pioneer Portfolio seeks ideas not only from the mainstream of health and health care but also looks to sources outside of these fields for innovations that might have transformative impact. Several Pioneer projects apply approaches from diverse sectors such as finance, design and entertainment to forge new solutions in health and health care arenas. In this way, we provide a distinct alternative to other Foundation program areas that focus on targeted problems or populations.

The Pioneer Portfolio tends to fund more ideas and projects in the early stages of development than other Foundation funding areas.  Smaller exploratory projects that demonstrate particularly promising work can sometimes lead to second-stage funding for further development. By funding projects in stages, the Pioneer Team can assess initial outcomes and potential impact before pursuing longer-term, larger investments.

The Pioneer team is looking for opportunities with high, possibly long-term returns, often amidst great uncertainty. Consequently, we recognize that our collection of projects inevitably will include several that do not accomplish the ambitious hoped-for objectives. Yet every idea that succeeds makes taking such risks worthwhile.  

Examples of current projects:

Extending the Cure—Ramanan Laxminaryan, an economist with Resources for the Future, is reframing how we fight drug-resistant diseases by suggesting we manage antibiotics as a shared societal resource. Working with regulatory, health, pharmaceutical and economic experts, he is building evidence and consensus around incentive-based policy alternatives to ensure a vital pipeline of effective antibiotics and combat "superbugs" that cannot be eliminated with existing drugs.

Project HealthDesign—This national program supports interdisciplinary teams to look beyond stand-alone personal health records (PHR) to design next-generation PHR systems that empower patients to better manage their health and health care. The vision is that a patient managing asthma and diabetes, for example, uses a PHR system outfitted with tailored tools that remind her to take medications, monitor glucose levels and even incorporate air quality updates into daily decisions. Beyond just giving patients access to their health information, smart PHR systems will help them manage and apply that data to improve their health, care and quality of life.

Influenza Prediction Markets—University of Iowa business school professors teamed up with an infectious disease expert to test whether the Iowa Electronic Markets—prediction markets that aggregate information and are best known for predicting election and film box office results—can target where influenza may strike in advance. Pioneer sponsored a successful pilot in Iowa with seasonal flu and is now supporting an avian influenza market, which taps a global network of experts to forecast when human-transmitted avian flu may occur and, if it does, when it may spread to the Americas.

Reliable Medical Justice—People on all sides of the medical liability debate see America's current system as broken and have strong opinions on various fixes; yet for years we have been unable to break through the gridlock to make headway toward new solutions. Through a set of grants, Common Good  and the Harvard School of Public Health are building the research base and policy consensus for a new system of specialized health courts, which would apply rational, consistent standards to resolving medical liability claims. Pioneer supports state-based testing of this model in hopes that it advances transparency, efficiency, cost savings and patient safety.

Myelin Repair Foundation  (MRF)—Pioneer supports MRF's effort to break new ground in how, and how fast, disease research can move from discovery to treatment. MRF's innovative research model provides the infrastructure for five scientific teams—spread across different university labs in the U.S. and Canada—to work virtually toward treatment breakthroughs for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. By pursuing a common research plan, sharing findings in real time and piggybacking experiments that might otherwise have taken years to accomplish, MRF and the scientific teams have been able to considerably speed their progress-they believe that they will be able to license at least one new drug target by the end of 2008, one full year ahead of schedule.

Submit a proposal to the Pioneer Team  

To participate in Pioneering Ideas, the team's blog, please visit http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/.  

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What We Don't Fund

We follow Foundation-wide guidelines for what we don't fund.

Last update: July 2007

Learn more about our strategy and the issues we are seeking to address in this area:

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