Vital Strategies

Vital Strategies builds air quality management capacity in cities across Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. This enables cities to reduce air pollution effectively, improving public health.

What problem are Vital Strategies trying to solve?

Air pollution is the fifth largest risk factor for mortality globally, causing the deaths of nearly 7 million people every year - more than 10x deaths from malaria. It is an issue worldwide, with 99% of the world’s population living in areas above WHO air quality guidelines. It is especially acute in low and middle income countries, where over 90% of deaths occur.

At the same time, air pollution is highly neglected by philanthropists, with just $2.36 million spent across all of Africa, Latin America and Asia (outside India and China) by private foundations in 2021. This implies less than $1 donated for every air pollution death - making air pollution in these regions 75x more neglected than HIV/AIDs funding. For more details, view our air pollution cause report.

What does Vital Strategies do?

Vital Strategies "helps governments strengthen their public health systems to contend with the most important and difficult health challenges." Vital Strategies has programs focused on ten major challenges to public health in over 60 countries.

Vital Strategies' air pollution program focuses on cities in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), where air quality is a major public health issue. They have deep engagement with city governments in Jakarta (Indonesia), Indore (India), and Nairobi (Kenya). Vital Strategies engages closely with health agencies and the wider health sector to push for clean air action.

Thanks to Vital Strategies, Jakarta's air quality management capacity has greatly increased. This has caused the Jakarta government to proactively take action to improve air quality (for instance, introducing and enforcing regulations on transport emissions.)

Why do we recommend this opportunity?

We believe Vital Strategies is an especially promising organization. This is because:

• Vital Strategies focus on cities in South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where air pollution is high and getting worse (see our cause area report for more details).
• They have a strong track record for improving air quality management capacity in cities such as Jakarta.
• Vital Strategies have close ties to public health agencies across LMICs.
• They are committed to an evidence-based approach, by establishing detailed monitoring and emissions apportionment, to inform where action is most impactful.

What would Vital Strategies do with more funding?

Vital Strategies would like to replicate their Jakarta clean action plan model in a further 10 cities across Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa: Surabaya (Indonesia), Pekanbaru (Indonesia), Bangkok (Thailand), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), Hanoi (Vietnam), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Kampala (Uganda), Nairobi (Kenya), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Kigali (Rwanda). To build air quality management capacity in these cities, Vital Strategies will:

• Enhance capacity of local government for air quality coordination regulation and enforcement
• Strengthen data on air quality levels and sources
  • Install low cost air quality sensors to monitor air pollution
  • Conduct a source apportionment study to identify which actions to prioritize
• Expand access and usage of air pollution data in policy decisions
  • Quantify the health and economic benefits of clean air actions
  • Enhance efforts to measure progress
• Raise awareness of air pollution amongst policymakers and the public