Finalist
The TB Innovation Summit: Modernizing the World’s Fight Against an Ancient Disease
Summary of work
Despite being preventable and curable, tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
In 2012, Johnson & Johnson introduced the first novel TB medicine in over forty years, and it has made a tremendous impact. But even more innovation is urgently needed to meet the United Nations’ goal of ending TB by 2030. 2018 was a major year for the TB community. The first-ever UN High-Level Meeting on TB galvanized unprecedented attention – but it also led to a surge of activism around access to medicines. To reframe the narrative, we forged an unprecedented partnership between J&J, the Stop TB Partnership, Global Fund, UN Foundation and World Economic Forum to host the landmark TB Innovation Summit in New York City. We brought together highly influential speakers, organised a first-of-its-kind interactive showcase of TB innovators, heard from survivors, inspired eight company commitments and created a platform to showcase J&J’s long-standing TB leadership. We captured the global health community’s attention, setting an inspirational tone for the High-Level Meeting, reframing the conversation and reinforcing J&J as the foremost private sector partner in TB. One attendee said “The TB Innovation Summit was the best event that entire week – even better than the UNHLM on TB.”
Judges’ comments
This campaign forged a strong partnership to raise awareness of TB. It had a very high level of engagement and was innovative, smart and all delivered in 10 weeks! It had good outcomes and outputs and made a real difference in the world.
