Sustainability

New grants to help improve global access to care

Merck is supporting community-led efforts to improve sustainable access to health care through $10 million in new grants

March 19, 2026

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We’re working to boost people’s access to health around the world with a series of new global grants — from strengthening dengue prevention in Southeast Asia to improving maternal health outcomes in Tanzania, and more.

We recently awarded the grants, totaling more than $10 million, to 44 non‑governmental organizations across 32 countries. The projects will support community‑led efforts to improve sustainable access to high‑quality health care (view the full list of grant recipients). These investments will help:

• Expand care in underserved communities
• Support screening, prevention and treatment efforts
• Train health care workers
• Close gaps in care through education, care navigation and digital tools  
    

“By investing in community-led efforts, we aim to help more people gain sustainable access to essential health services while closing gaps in care.”

• Kalahn Taylor-Clark, Ph.D., MPH
  VP and head of social impact and sustainability

Social impact and sustainability grantees

The grants are awarded through two programs created to improve access to health globally: Solutions for Healthy Communities and Merck for Mothers. We developed Solutions for Healthy Communities based on the belief that local organizations are best positioned to create meaningful, lasting change for their communities. Merck for Mothers is our global initiative to help create a world where no woman has to die while giving life.

Some examples of projects we’re excited to support starting in 2026 include:

• Patient education and navigation for uninsured community members in the U.S.: Community Volunteers in Medicine (Pennsylvania) will provide care navigation, preventive health education, referrals and coordinated follow‑up for approximately 30 uninsured patients per month following hospital or emergency department discharge. The program aims to reach more than 5,500 individuals and train 100 health care workers to help address care gaps affecting an estimated 35,000 uninsured community members.
• Strengthening dengue outbreak response in Southeast Asia: Asia Dengue Voice and Action Ltd. will deploy a digital platform to provide health care workers with real‑time data and improved access to public health resources, enabling faster and more targeted dengue prevention and response across high‑risk communities.
• Targeted interventions to improve maternal health outcomes in Tanzania: Pathfinder will expand access to high‑quality maternal health care across 60 facilities in Morogoro, a region with one of Tanzania’s highest maternal mortality ratios (>75 per 100,000 live births). Using a hub‑and‑spoke model, digital tools, and partnership with local government, the initiative will strengthen service delivery, referrals, supervision, data use and the provider–client experience.
• Improving continuity of maternal care for vulnerable women in Romania: UNICEF will equip community nurses with standardized digital tools to monitor pregnancies and coordinate care by adding a dedicated pre‑ and postnatal module to the Aplicația Medicală Comunitară platform. This approach will help address gaps in maternal care for rural populations facing provider shortages and fragmented referral pathways.

“By empowering women to seek care sooner and educating frontline health care workers about cancer, lives can be saved and families will thrive,” said Jennifer Dent, president and CEO of BIO Ventures for Global Health, one of this year’s recipients. The organization is working to improve breast and cervical cancer outcomes in Nigeria and Kenya by strengthening the community health workforce, empowering communities with health knowledge and communicating project impacts to inform policy and practice.

Learn more about our sustainability efforts.

2026 global grants

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Solutions for Healthy Communities grant recipients

Merck for Mothers grant recipients

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