This WaPo piece announces the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF), a collaboration led by Open Philanthropy, USAID, and UNICEF. It was co-authored by Alexander Berger (Open Phil’s CEO) and Samantha Power, head of USAID.
Ten years ago, when residents of Flint, Mich., were exposed to toxic levels of lead in their drinking water, 1 in 20 children in the city had elevated blood lead levels that placed them at risk for heart disease, strokes, cognitive deficits and developmental delays — health effects that residents still grapple with to this day. It was only after activists rallied, organized and advocated relentlessly that national attention focused on Flint, and officials committed nearly half a billion dollars to clean up Flint’s water.
Today, there is a lead poisoning crisis raging on a far greater scale — and hardly anyone is talking about it.
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The partnership will work to scale up this effective playbook. Given that so many communities have no idea how much damage lead is doing every day, and many governments don’t know the magnitude or source of the lead poisoning problem in their countries, we will first focus on running national blood surveys and testing consumer products to determine sources of lead poisoning. Next we’ll work with governments that lack the regulations they need to begin taking on the problem — in 50 of the 81 countries where USAID has missions, governments lack regulations against lead paint. We will get these governments tools like model laws to help them pass regulations and laboratory infrastructure to help them detect violations so laws can be enforced. And given how many affordable alternatives have already been developed for lead-based products, we will support the private sector in transitioning to these alternatives by brokering connections with suppliers and experts.
The PLF launched on the same day as LEAF, Open Phil’s new collaborative fund for lead exposure reduction.
It’s super cool to see USAID and OP partnering very publicly on such an important project. In addition to the obvious good this will do via the project’s direct impact on lead exposure, I’m glad to see such a powerful and reputable government agency implicitly endorsing OP as an organization. I hope this will help legitimize some of OP’s other important work, and pave the way for similar partnerships in other arenas.
This is one of the coolest (if not the coolest) thing I’ve seen in the EA “space” recently. A broad based partnership with an epic plan, combined with positive media like this is a great direction to go with issues as obviously tractable and neglected as lead exposure.
The combination of positive media and a really neglected issue seems ideal.