Decatur Nonprofit Wins World's Largest Humanitarian Prize

DECATUR, GA — The Task Force for Global Health, an international nonprofit that works to improve the health of the world’s poorest people, is the 2016 recipient of the $2 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.

The Decatur-based nonprofit, with nearly 100 employees locally, is the first Georgia organization to win the Hilton Prize, which is considered the largest humanitarian prize.

The task force’s mission is to reduce the burden of vaccine-preventable and neglected tropical diseases, as well as to strengthen health systems.

The organization is achieving its goals through partnerships with major pharmaceutical companies that donate medicines to be distributed worldwide to treat diseases that often are born of poverty and poor sanitary services. These diseases target the world’s poor because of their lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and basic health services. Blinding trachoma, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and intestinal worms are a few of the diseases the Task Force is working to eliminate – diseases that haven’t been seen in the United States in decades if ever. The Task Force currently supports work in 151 countries.

The task force, an affiliate of Emory University, will use the prize to acquire a larger headquarters to increase the impact of its growing programs and to launch new ones. The Task Force will be launching a $15 million capital campaign to help complete the vision for a new global health hub and headquarters. The new headquarters will be a hub for global health, a mantle only Atlanta can claim as home to groups including The Centers for Disease Control, CARE and The Carter Center.

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation was created in 1944 by Hilton, who founded Hilton Hotels and left his fortune to help the world’s disadvantaged and vulnerable people. An independent international jury annually awards the $2 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize to a nonprofit organization doing extraordinary work to reduce human suffering. From its inception, the Foundation has awarded more than $1.4 billion in grants, distributing $107 million in the U.S. and around the world in 2015. The Foundation’s current assets are approximately $2.5 billion.

Image: A boy helps Samuel Nicol, who was blinded by river blindness, walk through the village of Gbonjeima, Sierra Leone. Olivier Asselin, courtesy of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases.