Last Mile Health wins the $3 million Hilton Humanitarian Prize

What is the background?

Last Mile Health began in 2007 after Dr. Raj Panjabi, born in Liberia and then a physician in Boston, used about $6,000 from wedding guests to pay the first 17 community health workers in remote Liberian counties. The bet was simple: neighbours with eight weeks of training could diagnose and treat common childhood illnesses such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea, and help pregnant women plan clinic births, where doctors and nurses were scarce.

KPBS, drawing on Hilton Foundation materials, describes the model as professionalised front-line care rather than unpaid volunteering. Workers carry medicines, job-aid booklets and rapid tests, and they refer emergencies onward. The organisation later worked with the Government of Liberia and the Global Fund, trained more than 1,300 community health workers during the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak, and during COVID-19 delivered 6.2 million pieces of protective equipment while supporting a vaccination drive that KPBS reports helped Liberia reach an 81 percent vaccination rate.

What happened?

In August 2026 the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation named Last Mile Health the winner of its Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest award of its kind to a nonprofit, carrying a $3 million gift. Peter Laugharn, the foundation’s president and CEO, said health systems in the hardest-to-reach regions still face enormous strain and that Last Mile Health had met that challenge head-on.

The prize is an affirmation of a two-decade experiment that started with a wedding collection and now, according to the reporting, supports 20,000 community health workers helping about 32 million people in Liberia, Ethiopia, Malawi and Sierra Leone. Lisha McCormick, the group’s chief executive, told KPBS that about two billion people still live outside the reliable reach of clinics.

How did it happen?

Community health workers are typically people with a primary-school education who complete eight weeks of training, then walk a defined household circuit. Genesis Whegelee, who has worked in Rivercess County, Liberia, since 2018, visits 42 households — about three a day in rotation — for roughly four hours, and stays on call for emergencies. KPBS recounts a 22-month-old with malaria whom he treated at home with a rapid test, fever care and follow-up visits for five days, and a child with vomiting and diarrhoea he referred to a clinic because the signs could not be treated at home.

A 2025 analysis of 255 studies, cited via SSRN in the KPBS piece, found community health workers delivered care at a median cost of $0.59 per person per year in more than 80 percent of cases reviewed. Panjabi, now president emeritus, argued that early detection by a trained neighbour is how you cut costs without cutting care.

Why does it matter?

Remote households still lose children to illnesses that clinics know how to treat. Paying and supervising local workers turns that gap into a job, a referral path and a public record of who was seen. The Hilton gift is unrestricted enough, Panjabi said, to be put to work immediately in countries where the programme already operates, instead of sitting as a trophy.

What were the key results?

• $3 million Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize awarded in August 2026
• About 20,000 community health workers supported across four countries
• Roughly 32 million people within the current programme footprint
• First 17 workers in 2007 paid from about $6,000 in wedding gifts
• More than 1,300 workers trained during the 2014–16 Ebola response in Liberia
• 6.2 million pieces of protective equipment delivered during COVID-19

What happens next?

Panjabi told KPBS the money will be used in current countries with a goal of reaching 50 million people there by 2028. Last Mile Health will keep working through Africa Frontline First, a continent-wide effort it co-founded, to help other governments hire and supervise community health workers as paid practitioners rather than as an afterthought.