We believe you have a right to know how a health information service makes money. Funding shapes incentives, and incentives shape what gets published and how. On a site about your health, that matters more than almost anywhere else.
This page explains where Ilerada’s money comes from, what it does not come from, and the rules we apply to make sure funding never compromises clinical content.
The short version
Ilerada is funded by its parent company, Cormen. Cormen’s income comes from a combination of employer health services, institutional partnerships, and non-clinical advertising. No pharmaceutical company, medical device manufacturer, or supplement brand pays for or influences any clinical content on Ilerada. No article is ever written or shaped to promote a commercial product.
Cormen — our parent company
Ilerada is a publication of Cormen, Nigeria’s integrated health-technology company. Cormen funds Ilerada as a public-benefit activity central to its mission — and also because a trusted, well-read health information platform serves Cormen’s other services.
Ilerada does not, at this stage, generate direct revenue of its own. It is built and maintained from Cormen’s operating budget. The expectation is that this changes over time as the platform grows — but that growth will follow the funding principles on this page, not the other way around.
What Ilerada’s funding comes from (and will come from)
1. Cormen operating budget
The primary source of funding for Ilerada today is Cormen’s core business income. Cormen earns revenue from employer wellness programmes, occupational health services, and technology products sold to Nigerian businesses and healthcare providers.
None of these commercial relationships gives any funder influence over what Ilerada publishes. Cormen’s business clients are not told what Ilerada writes. They do not see editorial content before it is published. Their relationship with Cormen is entirely separate from Ilerada’s editorial operation.
2. Institutional and NGO partnerships
We work with Nigerian and international health organisations — NGOs, public health agencies, foundations, and research institutions — on content partnerships. These may involve:
- Co-commissioning an article series on a specific health topic (for example, malaria prevention ahead of the rainy season, or a series on antenatal care for an NGO running a maternal health programme).
- Funding the translation of content into additional Nigerian languages.
- Funding the production of audio or community health worker versions of articles.
Rules we apply to these partnerships:
- The partner may suggest topics and provide source material. The writing, clinical review, and editorial decision-making remain entirely with Ilerada.
- The partner does not approve, veto, or modify content before publication.
- Every co-commissioned article carries a disclosure — for example: “This article series was supported by [Organisation]. Editorial decisions were made independently by Ilerada.”
- We do not accept funding from organisations whose primary interest is in a commercial health product — even if they present themselves as a foundation or research body.
3. Non-clinical advertising
We plan to carry display advertising on Ilerada. This will be limited and governed by strict rules.
What we will and will not advertise:
| Permitted | Not permitted |
|---|---|
| Consumer brands unrelated to health (telecoms, FMCG, fintech, food, fashion) | Pharmaceutical products |
| Nigerian businesses broadly | Medical devices sold direct-to-consumer |
| Health insurance | Dietary supplements making therapeutic claims |
| General government public service announcements | Unregistered or unverified health products |
| Health facilities (clinics, hospitals, labs) | Any advertiser who requests editorial influence |
| NAFDAC-registered consumer health products (toothpaste, sunscreen) | Weight-loss products, herbal “cures”, MLM health products |
Advertisements on Ilerada will be clearly marked as advertisements. They will never appear within the body of a clinical article. They will never be designed to look like editorial content.
We will not serve pharmaceutical advertising. This is a firm policy and not a sliding-scale decision. The reason is simple: pharmaceutical advertising on a health information site creates an incentive — even a subtle, subconscious one — for the editorial team to frame content favourably toward advertisers’ products. We do not want that incentive in the building. We would rather make less money.
4. Employer and institutional licensing
Cormen’s employer health services include providing Ilerada content — in branded or white-label form — for employee wellness platforms. This is a B2B revenue stream for Cormen that may partly subsidise Ilerada.
All editorial standards apply to licensed content identically. An employer who licenses Ilerada content does not get articles tailored to their interests, and does not see content before publication.
5. Grants
We apply for grants from health, media and technology foundations to support specific projects — particularly translation into Nigerian languages, audio production for low-literacy audiences, and research into how health information reaches Nigerians in rural areas.
Grant-funded projects are disclosed. Grant funders do not shape editorial output.
What Ilerada will never do
We state these as explicit commitments, not aspirations:
- We will never accept payment from a pharmaceutical company, medical device manufacturer, or supplement brand to publish, promote, or favourably frame content about their products. This applies to articles, reviews, sponsored content, native advertising, and any other format.
- We will never allow an advertiser to approve or influence an article — not the topic, not the framing, not the conclusion, not the sources cited.
- We will never publish a paid article and present it as independent editorial content. Sponsored content is labelled as sponsored content, always.
- We will never sell data about our readers’ health interests to commercial parties. Our reader data is not a product. See our Privacy Policy.
- We will never change a clinical conclusion because a commercial partner has asked us to.
The firewall between editorial and commercial
Ilerada operates a strict separation between its editorial team and any commercial activity. In practice this means:
- The editorial team and clinical reviewers do not know who is advertising on Ilerada, and do not see advertising bookings.
- No advertiser is told, before booking, what articles will be published in a given period.
- Advertisers cannot request that their ad not appear alongside specific articles.
- The Editor-in-Chief has an unconditional right to publish or kill any article on editorial grounds, regardless of commercial consequences.
- Any commercial team member or external party who attempts to influence editorial content is required to be reported to the Editor-in-Chief.
If you believe this firewall has been breached in any article — that something reads like it was written to favour a specific product or company — please write to editorial@ilerada.com and flag it. We will investigate.
Funding and language editions
Ilerada currently publishes in English, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa. Translation is expensive, especially translation that meets our standard of clinician-reviewed medical terminology. In practice, this means:
- The English edition is produced first, and fully funded from core budget.
- Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa editions of each article are produced as resources allow, prioritising articles most needed in communities where those languages are dominant.
- Where a language edition is made possible by grant funding or partnership funding, we say so.
We do not let funding availability determine which language communities receive accurate health information — we try to build the funding model around that goal, rather than the other way around.
Our aspiration
We want Ilerada to become financially sustainable on terms that keep it genuinely independent. That means building revenue from sources — institutional partnerships, non-clinical advertising, employer licensing — that do not create a conflict with the thing we are actually trying to do.
We do not think that is naive. We think it is the only version of a health information service worth building.
If you have ideas, resources, or connections that could help — particularly on funding translation or reaching communities outside Lagos and Abuja — please write to partners@cormen.org.
Contact
- For funding enquiries and partnerships: partners@cormen.org
- For editorial concerns: editorial@ilerada.com
- For general questions: hello@ilerada.com