Embrace
Saving Low Birth Weight Babies in the World’s Poorest Regions
Location: Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, India, China
Embrace: Grantee in 2014
Embrace has developed and supported a low-cost infant warmer that can save the lives of low birth weight and premature babies. Every year, more than one million of these infants die within the first month of life; almost all of those deaths occur in developing countries. It is the mission of Embrace is to address the problem in the poorest regions of the world.
As students in Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability program in 2008, the founders of Embrace came up with the product idea for the infant warmer. They were charged with designing an intervention for neonatal hypothermia that would cost less than 1% of the $20,000 needed for a state-of-the-art incubator. The product they developed, and then subsequently refined, is a fabric cocoon suffused with reheatable pouches of a wax-like substance. This small, lightweight sleeping bag is not only
Embrace has evolved into a for-profit social enterprise, Embrace Innovations, that has developed additional products. They continue to work with 501(c)(3)non-profit partners in deploying the Embrace infant warmers to developing countries
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GRANT SUMMARY AND PURPOSE
2014: $20,000 to distribute approximately 60 Infant Warmers through the Kisenyi Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. Funds also cover education and training for caregivers and parents to ensure proper use.
IMPACT
Protect more than 400 low birth weight babies and improve the survival rate of these babies.