On the Funding Front

Just wanted to give you all some good news in the face of the all the worry. RiSci just received another small grant for the Communications Program from the Sloan Foundation. The Communications Program is RiSci's 4th program (Global Policy Communications) in the key 4 Pandemic Preparedness Initiatives. It is being done in partnership with Foreign Affairs, Nature, the Asia Society, NTI, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This will also likely see ties to the new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza (IPAPI) recently announced by U.S. President Bush at the UN. It means the Communications Program is well funded, and we are thankful of what this will allow us to accomplish.

Now, of course, we still need to fund the other three initiatives – the Vaccines and Anti-Virals Programs, the Global Preparedness Plans, and the Public Health Communications Network.

Thank you to everyone who has and continues to inspire individuals to come forward and become part of the solution – and thanks to those people who do come forward as well, it's not easy being the first person to venture into the unknown.

– Dan Sharp, RiSci (Flu Preparedness Team)