RUSH Foundation

RUSH was founded in September 2010 to help breathe new thinking into HIV policy and on-the-ground interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.

We are a small, independent organisation which doesn’t have to cater to donor consensus. We therefore have a higher risk tolerance than most and we are impatient with obstacles to fresh thinking. Our goal is to avoid consensus solutions  and focus our funding on innovative, disruptive ideas to address the pandemic and its social effects.

We aim to stimulate high level policy debate which generates new perspectives and leads to tangible improvement in government and donor HIV funding strategy, as well as allocation priorities. We also pioneer new on-the-ground approaches by seeding innovation in sustainable livelihood improvements, behaviour change projects, etc.

We seek to stay away from well-beaten tracks and focus on funding initiatives that are either overlooked or poorly served by previously-existing efforts.

RUSH funds RethinkHIV, a consortium of senior researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Imperial College London, Harvard School of Public Health, the Centre for the Study of African Economies and the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. The consortium evaluates new evidence related to the costs, benefits, effects, fiscal implications, and developmental impacts of HIV interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, in order to maximise contributions to the fight against HIV there.

The aim of RethinkHIV is to find ways of creating, optimising, and sustaining fiscal space for domestic HIV investment, as well as exploring long-term, sustainable national and international financing mechanisms

RUSH is run by President, Marina Galanti and funded by philanthropist and co-founder, Kim Duncan. RUSH is a registered charity in the United Kingdom.