This week, Open Phil launched the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF) and became a founding partner of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (PLF). Given the interest around these initiatives, I thought an AMA might be a good way to share more.
At Open Phil, I’ve been fortunate to oversee our work on lead exposure with Santosh Harish and have been involved in some of the recent developments. I’ve particularly focused on helping get LEAF off the ground and contributing to the early stages of the PLF.
If you’re interested in learning more, here are a few useful resources:
- Blog post announcing the Lead Exposure Action Fund
- An op-ed on lead exposure in the Washington Post, co-authored by Alexander Berger and Administrator Samantha Power
- The Lead Exposure Action Fund website
- A video of the PLF launch, featuring remarks from Jill Biden and several global leaders
A bit more about me:
I’ve been with Open Phil for about 2.5 years, after six years at GiveWell and a year with Giving What We Can. Currently, I lead our grantmaking in public health policy — covering areas like lead exposure, air quality, alcohol policy, and suicide prevention — as well as Global Aid Policy, and some work related to effective altruism (GHW). Before joining Open Phil, I worked across a variety of areas at GiveWell, from public health policy to charity evaluations, including methodological questions around moral weights and discount rates. I also contributed to GiveWell’s response to COVID-19.
I’m happy to answer any questions you have about lead exposure, our work at Open Phil, or anything else that catches your eye! I’ll be answering questions on Thursday afternoon, October 3rd.
In 2020 when I asked you about lead policy work, you weren't optimistic that people without strong networks and expertise could make much progress on policy advocacy. Has your view changed?
Question for either James or Julia: Is this specifically for lead policy or just policy advocacy in general? And can you elaborate why?
Can you tell us a little bit about how this project and partnership came together? What was OpenPhil’s role? What is it like working with such a large number of organizations, including governments? Do you see potential for more collaborations like this?
I am very happy about the LEAF initiative!
Do you have any ideas for why funders didn't pay attention to lead sooner?
A lot of the recent discussion in the lead space has focused on sources such as paint, spices, ceramics, and cookware. In terms of trends, my (low-confidence) sense is that these sources of exposure are likely either plateauing or decreasing. But the use of lead in batteries is expected to increase a lot (based on a quick search, the market may double in the next 10-15 years).
1) How much do you think we should be focusing on batteries – and informal ULAB recycling – compared to other sources of exposure?
2) Are there any prevention/mitigation strategies in this space that people are pursuing that you're excited about? Or approaches that you'd be keen for people to explore?
The linked blog post says that starting a collaboration with other funders was one of OP's goals for this year (quote from the section on 2024 goals from another blog post):
Which, from the wording and the timeline I assume was essentially referring to LEAF project. Is this a direction OP (perhaps inspired by this argument about PEPFAR?) increasingly wants to go in with other projects? And do you know if there are other collaborations like this in the pipeline?
Hi James, on the South Asian Air Quality portfolio, would be it be fair to say that OP's grants so far have been focused on research and diagnosing both the problem and potential solutions, rather than executing on interventions themselves? Is the current bottleneck a lack of cost-effective and feasible ideas - and if so, what looks most promising so far?