Help meet the pandemic challenge

The Trinity Challenge, a coalition of the world’s leading businesses, academics and public institutions, is now accepting applications from global participants with ideas on how to safeguard our health and economic systems from future health emergencies. Legal & General is a founding member of the coalition, which is offering a £10m prize to fund breakthrough solutions that will better protect a billion more people.

To be accepted into The Challenge, applicants will have to provide ideas and concepts addressing at least one of three areas in which we need to improve our approach to pandemic prevention and control: better identification, better response and better recovery. Applicants can request access to finance, data and resources from the founding organisations – the deadline for these applications is 8 November, while for applicants not requiring additional support the deadline is 15 January 2021.

Founding member

Legal & General was among the organisations to support former UK Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies as she set up The Trinity Challenge because Covid-19 has laid bare the difficulties we face in the three key areas. The initiative has challenged the world’s best and brightest minds to harness the potential of data and analytics to build resilience against future health emergencies. We hope to have 180 strong submissions by 30 April ahead of an awards event in mid-May.

Convened by Dame Sally in her role as the Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, the Challenge has 22 founding members. In addition to Legal & General, they include: Aviva, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Brunswick, University of Cambridge, Discovery, Facebook, Global Virome Project, Google, GSK, HKUMed, Imperial College London, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Internews, LSE, McKinsey and Company, Microsoft, Northeastern University, Optum, Reckitt Benckiser, Tencent, and Zenysis Technologies.

Dame Sally says: “There will be another COVID-19, and there is an opportunity for the international community to learn lessons now and prepare for the future. The Trinity Challenge is a recognition by business, academia and philanthropy of the need for new, breakthrough ideas and approaches to beat the next pandemic."

In a 2021 webinar on the Trinity Challenge's progress and its importance in light of the pandemic, Dame Sally added that it was hoped the solutions put forward as part of the Challenge would be presented at the 2021 G7 Summit, held in June in the UK. If the next health emergency is global, she says, the solutions we put forward should be too.

Working together

The initiative reflects Legal & General’s longstanding belief in the importance of collaboration between people and organisation to tackle the issues our society faces. Participants will be organised into Challenge Teams, forging cross-geography collaborations which reflect a diverse set of backgrounds and specialisms.

The Trinity Challenge aims to provide solutions that reflect the holistic nature of future health emergencies. Challenge Teams will develop ideas, tools and insights relevant to each of the three stages of these emergencies:

• Identification: Building early-warning systems and ground-breaking technologies to identify pathogens or outbreaks before they cause great harm.
• Response: Developing insights and capabilities to target interventions with maximal effectiveness and at minimal cost.
• Recovery: Strengthening the social and economic revival following health emergencies and constructing an equitable path toward an inclusive recovery.

Developing science and technology for a more resilient and inclusive society was at the heart of Legal & General’s strategy long before Covid-19. As a partner in Bruntwood SciTech, we’re helping to develop a network of innovation districts across the UK, with our Alderley Park site in Cheshire serving as one of the government’s major testing centres for Covid-19. We are also invested in a £4bn partnership with the University of Oxford, helping to bring affordable housing and improved innovation infrastructure to the city.

Through our £20m funding of a new Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) at the University of Edinburgh, we are helping to bring together leading experts in order to improve later-life care. We’re also providing a further £5m to fund innovative, affordable living facilities for older people at our 24-acre Newcastle Helix development as well as a ‘new model’ care home in the city.

Watch the video message from Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Orgnisation.