Kerry Murphy Healey Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship

To address these fundamental issues of access and infrastructure that plague medical care around the world, Babson is establishing the new Kerry Murphy Healey Center for Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The Healey Center’s involvement with the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) is the latest connection between Babson and Rwanda. In the past, Babson had operated an entrepreneurial center in the country and sent teams of students to Rwanda to teach entrepreneurship.

Babson and Pfizer share a similar set of values and a commitment to making positive, breakthrough changes, Dr. Albert Bourla, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer says. And, his [2021] Commencement address further strengthened the relationship between the two entrepreneurial organizations.

An interdisciplinary team of Babson professors is researching the growing disparity in access to good health care in the United States, funded by a new faculty scholarship from The Arthur M. Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

At the July event on the campus of UGHE in northern Rwanda, 40 students from three Rwandan schools and several countries identified problems in healthcare delivery and ideated and refined potential solutions during a roughly 48-hour period.

The grant, the first from NIH to Babson, is expected to provide up to $1.5 million over five years, while the curriculum created is meant to increase the chance of new startups created to address substance abuse disorders.