The Conduit spoke with Kris Sterkens, Company Group Chairman, Janssen EMEA and J&J Impact Ventures Investment Committee member about the vital role impact investment can play in providing quality healthcare for all and why a health-worker-first approach is a key to building resilient health systems now and in the future.
How would you summarize Johnson & Johnson’s overarching approach to advancing access to quality care?
Guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson has always sought to deploy a full and unique range of tools to deliver social impact, from grantmaking to social enterprise and even in many cases our core business. Our philanthropic approach delivered through the Johnson & Johnson Foundation of course utilizes funding, but we also apply our extensive expertise on the ground around the world, and a highly active employee engagement program. Most recently, we created the Johnson & Johnson Center for Health Worker Innovation (CHWI); our aim with CHWI is to formalize the cross-enterprise efforts of our Corporate, Pharmaceutical, Consumer and Medical Devices teams to test, evolve and scale the best ideas by and for the health workforce, wherever those ideas may originate. CHWI is tasked with guiding a $250 million, 10-year commitment to support one million nurses, midwives and community health workers reaching 100 million people by 2030. Most recently, our Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies and Foundation extended this commitment with an additional $50 million commitment to support frontline health workers battling COVID-19.
Why did J&J decide to pursue a corporate venture capital approach by creating J&J Impact Ventures, rather than choosing a purely philanthropic approach?
Innovative finance is a terrific example of our comprehensive approach to improving health for humanity. As impact investing has grown but lagged within health care specifically, our experts engaged and evaluated the promise and fit of this new tool. Our team became ever more enthusiastic about the potential impact investing offers; unlike traditional grants, impact investing brings capital and expertise to promising social businesses so that as their business grows, so does their impact.
J&J Impact Ventures, an investment fund within J&J Foundation, was established as a result of this work. Through it we have been able to engage with remarkable entrepreneurs to explore how new types of capital could scale both their social businesses and their impact in communities around the world. Our investments emphasise a tech-forward approach to enhance health worker’s abilities to deliver on the frontline, especially in communities where there is a severe shortage of health workers and the existing health workforce is over-burdened. This perfectly reinforces how we at the Foundation have approached social innovation and partnership from the start – supporting the power of local ideas to create real, sustainable change.
