Grand Challenges Canada and Spring Impact have released a new case study series exploring how four organizations achieved breakthroughs in scaling global health innovations. The series examines the strategies behind expanding reach, making adoption rational for governments with limited capacity, and building evidence that responds to the questions future adopters are asking.
The organizations featured—Healthy Entrepreneurs, Karma Primary Healthcare, Be Girl, and Community Empowerment Lab—work across areas including violence prevention, newborn care, menstrual health, and primary care in underserved communities. Their journeys demonstrate how innovations can move from local impact to significant scale.
The results of these efforts are striking. Be Girl has distributed one million menstrual hygiene products and provided menstrual health education to 500,000 adolescents across three countries. Community Empowerment Lab has helped ensure newborn care practices, long present in policy, are now routinely implemented in public hospitals. Karma Primary Healthcare has facilitated 6.2 million primary care interactions in communities with few alternatives. Healthy Entrepreneurs has mobilized over 20,000 Community Health Entrepreneurs, extending health services to 13 million people.
Together, these examples highlight how scaling innovations in global health requires not only strong ideas but also strategies that make adoption feasible, evidence that builds confidence, and approaches that allow governments and partners to see these solutions as rational, sustainable choices.
