Newsletter
Financial Innovations Labs Newsletter: 2024 Recap and 2025 Updates
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In This Newsletter
Financial Innovations Labs Updates
2024 Events and Convenings Highlights
Financial Innovations Labs Updates
Our current projects underway:
- Unlocking Investment Pathways for Resilient and Sustainable Critical Mineral Supply Chains—Confronting an exponential increase in demand from the energy transition, tech and artificial intelligence, aerospace, and defense sectors, the supply side presents serious risks to economic stability and national security. Decades of investment disparities have resulted in highly concentrated supply chains and increased risks in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors.
- Unlocking Private Investment for Preventive Health Care in the UK—The Milken Institute’s Project Prevent, a collaboration across Milken Institute Health, International, and Finance pillars, is designing innovative financing models—such as blended finance funds, business relief funds, and social impact bonds—to address the funding and financing gaps in preventive health care, to improve health outcomes across the UK, and alleviate pressure on the National Health Service.
- New Models for Financing Affordable Senior Housing for LGBTQ+ Older Adults—The Financial Innovations Lab (FIL) team is collaborating with SAGEusa.org to examine the challenges LGBTQ+ older adults currently face in the senior housing market. The team will identify a menu of financing structures to drive more private capital toward building and long-term operation of these developments and the services they provide.
- Innovative Financing for Cancer Care—Our FIL and Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration (SPARC) teams are partnering with the American Cancer Society and BrightEdge to address critical market failures and funding gaps in cancer care and research and mobilize capital toward unmet needs in oncology.
Continuing Lab Outcomes
- A Collaborative Network to Advance Women’s Health—Following the release of our National Network to Advance Innovative Financing for Women’s Reproductive Health report, the FIL and Public Health teams are working to advance the recommendations to establish an alliance and design a pooled investment fund uniting women’s health stakeholders to foster and accelerate data-sharing, resource collection, institutional knowledge exchange, and funding to advance innovation and access to women’s health.
2024 Events and Convenings Highlights
January 23: Building on previous efforts in coordinating global early warning systems (EWS) for enhanced pandemic preparedness and health security, the FIL team hosted a dynamic roundtable discussion in São Paulo focused on addressing country-specific challenges in building and sustaining EWS in Brazil.
April 16: On the VegTech Invest podcast episode “Why Institutional and Philanthropic Investors Are Focusing on Food,” Managing Director Caitlin MacLean and Senior Director Holly Freishtat shared insights.
May 5–8: View the full list of sessions the FIL team contributed at the 2024 Global Conference:
- Zeroing In: Investing for a Green Economy
- Critical Minerals: Mining the Future Economy
- Institutional Investors Balancing Risk and Return
- Unlocking Investment in Critical Minerals (Invite-only)
- Navigating the Evolving Landscape of ESG Disclosures across Borders (Invite-only)
- Investments for a Changing World
- Global Water Solutions: Can Innovation Save Us?
- Championing Innovation and ROI in Women’s Health Care
- The New Climate Reality: Financing for Adaptation, Resilience, and Recovery
- Carbon Credits: Leveraging Trust in a Climate Transition Era (Invite-only)
September 25: MacLean moderated “A Global Economic Outlook” at the AON Risk and Resilience Summit.
October 10: Associate Director Ashley Campany participated in the Reproductive Health Innovation Summit, hosted by the Packard Foundation in collaboration with the Education Foundation of America. The summit brought together over 30 investors and grantmakers to identify high-impact opportunities for addressing critical gaps in access to reproductive health.
November 13: MacLean moderated a private roundtable at the Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit, “A Collaborative Network to Advance Women’s Health,” to continue to advocate the goals of our National Network to Advance Innovative Financing for Women’s Reproductive Health.
December 3: Associate Director Yun Fu presented findings from the financing global early warning systems Lab at the Global Surveillance Summit, a side event hosted by Africa CDC and the International Society for Infectious Diseases, as part of the International Congress on Infectious Diseases 2024, in Cape Town, South Africa.
December 5–6: Director Kanika Singh moderated the invite-only “Unlocking Financing for Secure and Sustainable Minerals,” and Campany and Singh coordinated the public “Investing in the Energy Transition: Critical Minerals, Climate Tech, and Policy Shifts” panels at the Milken Institute’s Middle East and Africa Summit.
December 10: Campany spoke on a panel in Washington, DC, “Minding the Data Gap: Women’s Health Research and Health Investments,” sponsored by S&R Evermay and Health Finance Institute.
December 11: MacLean moderated a panel discussion, “Building Climate Resilience: Preparing Business for a Sustainable Future,” at the Reuters NEXT event in New York City.
December 11: President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted the White House Conference on Women’s Health Research in partnership with the Milken Institute. Executive Vice President Esther Krofah addressed the attendees, and Campany attended, along with other members of the Government Affairs and Health teams.
Recent Publications
- Innovative Financing and Care Models to Scale Affordable Housing Solutions for Middle-Income Older Adults
- A National Network to Advance Innovative Financing for Women's Reproductive Health
- Financing Global Early Warning Systems: Brazil
- Financing Global Early Warning Systems: Kenya
- Financing Global Early Warning Systems: Indonesia
On the heels of Hurricane Milton, Singh wrote a Milken Institute Insights piece, “Preparing for the New Hurricane Reality,” discussing the rapid intensification of weather patterns. She highlights the value and impact of our past and current FIL work, including initiatives such as Financing Urban Resiliency and Innovative Finance Models for Early Warning Systems for Pandemics. These efforts prioritize policy and investment frameworks that will enable better preparation for the devastating conditions that will continue to cause destruction.
- In conjunction with the UN International Day of Care and Support on October 29, Ivy Hsu wrote a Milken Institute Insights piece, “Bridging the Affordable Senior Housing Gap for the ‘Forgotten Middle’: An Investment Opportunity,” sharing the recommendations from our FIL report, Innovative Financing and Care Models to Scale Affordable Housing Solutions for Middle-Income Older Adults. The article discusses how the growing senior population is driving demand for housing solutions and the viable financing models that can address this pressing need.
- “Financing Models to Safeguard Women’s Reproductive Health” is an op-ed Campany wrote for ImpactAlpha, detailing how the sector is ripe for investment but requires more collaboration and partnerships. Milken is working to orchestrate a network that drives scalable, sustainable solutions.
Past Events
- January 27, 2025: The Milken Institute and the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group hosted an exclusive reception at the House of Lords to welcome the release of the report, The Reinvention of Prevention: How to Fund and Finance a Pivot to a Prevention-First Healthcare System.
- January 28, 2025: The Milken Institute Advisory Council held a Roundtable on Preventative Health in London.
Upcoming Events
- March 5, 2025: Finance Forum, Washington, DC
- May 4–7, 2025: Global Conference, Los Angeles
- June 11–12, 2025: The SPARC and FIL teams will hold a lab in collaboration with ACS/Bright Edge in New York
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