Aviva has joined forces with global business and academic leaders to launch the Trinity Challenge – an initiative that will bring together the world’s best and brightest to better protect the world against health emergencies.
The global health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 have laid bare our current inability to identify, respond to and recover from health emergencies. Launching the Challenge, former Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the United Kingdom, Dame Sally Davies said:
“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.
"My career has been inspired by making sure all people, everywhere, have the best possible life chances. Health is integral to that, and we are seeing this now more than ever.
"We need to come together to make sure this never happens again.
"We need new ways of working, new partnerships, new ideas, and believe that together this strong and growing coalition can and will generate acts that protect and improve lives and livelihoods everywhere.”
Convened by Dame Sally Davies in her role as Master of Trinity College, at the University of Cambridge, the Trinity Challenge has 20 founding members representing a diverse coalition of world leading organisations across the private, public and social sectors.
It sets a series of urgent questions to harness the potential of data and analytics to learn and share lessons from the great innovations made to combat Covid-19 and to build resilience against future health emergencies.
The Challenge will provide funding to support and scale innovations across areas including economics, behavioural sciences, and epidemiology.
The power of collaboration
From anywhere in the world, Challenge Teams will be able to partner with global experts, drawing on their resources and support.
They will develop changemaking 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.
Discussing Aviva’s role in the Trinity Challenge, Orlando Machado, Aviva’s Chief Data Scientist, said: “The Trinity Challenge is required because we’re facing a global crisis. Not just in the short-term, but with real long-term impacts on health and economic wellbeing.
“We’re supporting the challenge because for over 300 years we’ve been there to help people manage risk around the things they value most: their health, their family, their livelihoods.
“I’m really excited to be supporting this challenge. We can help people across the world and I’m proud Aviva can play a part.”
Transcript
My name’s Orlando Machado and I am chief data scientist at Aviva.
The Trinity Challenge is needed because we’re facing a global crisis, not just in the short term but with real long-term impacts on health and economic wellbeing.
Data science and analytics can play a role in solving this, but if we’re really going to crack it, we’re going to need to work together.
And we’re supporting this challenge because for over 300 years we’ve been there to help people manage risks around the things they value most. Their health, their families, their livelihoods.
We think that this group has real power to make a difference.
I am really excited to be supporting this challenge. I think we can help people across the world and I’m proud that Aviva can play a part.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO welcomed the opening of The Trinity Challenge, saying: "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the world was not prepared. Together, we all have a responsibility to do everything we can to ensure a pandemic of this magnitude, with this level of disruption to lives and livelihoods, never happens again.
We welcome the Trinity Challenge, which brings together multiple partners to harness the power of data and analytics for a safer world."
The Founding Members are: Aviva, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Brunswick Group, University of Cambridge, Discovery Limited, Facebook, Global Virome Project, Google, HKUMed, Imperial College London, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Internews, Legal and General, LSE, McKinsey and Company, Microsoft, Northeastern University, Reckitt Benckiser, Tencent, Zenysis Technology
-ENDS-
Notes to editors
About the Trinity Challenge
- The Trinity Challenge is a coalition of members united by the common aim of using data and advanced analytics to develop insights and actions to contribute to a world better protected from health emergencies.
- Our Vision is to safeguard the lives and livelihoods of one billion more people by using data and analytics to better predict and prevent outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics, and to improve the health, economic and social response and recovery to health emergencies and endemic disease.
- Our Mission is to give the brightest minds a platform to partner with leaders from businesses, the social sector and academia to collaborate and contribute insights as global public goods.
- Our Goal is to identify, generate and recognise insights to contribute to the goal of a world better protected from health emergencies and to drive positive health, economic and social changes in how the world responds to and recovers from outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics.
- In order to realise the above, we are (i) launching a public Challenge on 14 September 2020 to generate, identify and recognise boundary-spanning insights across the categories of identification, response and recovery (ii) convening high-impact collaborations, from diverse sectors and geographies, to drive action immediately (iii) strengthening the data and analytics ecosystem in global public health, and committing to trusted data collaboration by promoting openness, privacy, security, empowerment, and usability.
- Visit the website at https://thetrinitychallenge.org, follow up @Twitter @linkedin @facebook
Notes to editors:
- We are the UK's leading diversified insurer and we operate in the UK, Ireland and Canada. We also have international investments in India and China.
- We help our 20.5 million (as at 31 December 2024) customers make the most out of life, plan for the future, and have the confidence that if things go wrong we'll be there to put it right.
- We have been taking care of people for more than 325 years, in line with our purpose of being 'with you today, for a better tomorrow'. In 2024, we paid £29.3 billion in claims and benefits to our customers.
- In 2021, we announced our ambition to become Net Zero by 2040, the first major insurance company in the world to do so. While we are working towards our sustainability ambitions, we recognise that while we have control over Aviva’s operations and influence over our supply chain, when it comes to decarbonising the economy in which we operate and invest, Aviva is one part of a far larger global system. Nevertheless, we remain focused on the task and are committed to playing our part in the collective effort to enable the global transition. Find out more about our climate goals at www.aviva.com/sustainability/climate and our sustainability ambition and action at www.aviva.com/sustainability.
- Aviva is a Living Wage, Living Pension and Living Hours employer and provides market-leading benefits for our people, including flexible working, paid carers leave and equal parental leave. Find out more at https://www.aviva.com/about-us/our-people/
- As at 31 December 2024, total Group assets under management at Aviva Group were £407 billion and our estimated Solvency II shareholder capital surplus as at 31 March 2025 was £7.6 billion. Our shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange and we are a member of the FTSE 100 index.
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