Deadline: 30 June 2017
The Positive Action Challenges in collaboration with Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) & Every Woman Every Child, currently seek to Identify effective solutions at the community level to improve retention of mothers living with HIV on ART through pregnancy, delivery, breastfeeding and beyond to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
This may include development of innovative approaches or scale-up of proven interventions. Innovative and novel approaches are particularly encouraged. Solutions may include service delivery methods, adherence/clinical support, educational interventions and/or new technologies but should not contradict national breastfeeding guidelines for women living with HIV.
Priority Areas
Entries must be focused on:
- Increased retention of women living with HIV on ART during entire period of pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding
- Reduced incidence of HIV infection of infants during breastfeeding period by women living with HIV
- Improved viral suppression of breastfeeding mothers on ART during breastfeeding period
- Increase in HIV-negative testing status of infants at the end of breastfeeding period
Eligibility Criteria
Positive Action Challenges are open to any applicant (“Applicant”) who is
- an individual, age 18 years or older; or
- a group of individuals in which at least one individual is 18 years or older (individuals under 18 are eligible to participate in any Challenge unless prohibited by applicable law); or
- one or more public or private entities, including, without limitation, universities, academic institutions, not-for-profit entities and private sector organisations.
- Unless otherwise restricted by the Challenge, the Applicant may be from any geographic area.
- The Applicant must comply with these Challenge Rules and all funding rules associated with any Challenge prizes.
- The Applicant may not be a healthcare provider who is qualified to prescribe medicinal products or directly or indirectly influence the use of such products. In the event the Applicant is a governmental entity or a governmental employee, ViiV Healthcare reserves the right to conduct an evaluation to ensure Applicant’s eligibility with these Challenge Rules and any applicable Challenge criteria.
- In addition, ViiV Healthcare reserves the right to evaluate the eligibility of any government official or the eligibility of Applicants that reside in a jurisdiction that restricts or prohibits contests.
- The Applicant, including each individual member of an Applicant group, may not be an employee of ViiV Healthcare or any of its affiliates, a judge of the Challenge in question, or any other party involved with the design, production, execution or distribution of the Challenge or a member of the household of such an individual.
- The Applicant must not be or have a member who is currently on the Excluded Parties List maintained by the United States government.
- There is no maximum team size. Each Applicant must assign at least one named team leader. If Applicant teams include members under 18 years of age, those members are required to submit a Parent Consent Form signed by a parent or legal guardian.
Judging Criteria
In addition to the below criteria, solutions must demonstrate how the challenge statement is met in the context of resource-limited settings without contradicting national breastfeeding guidelines for women living with HIV in the resource-limited settings targeted.
- People Centred: Entries may focus on a process, technology or other method but the ultimate benefit must be measurable in terms of impact on people’s lives. Must ensure privacy, demonstrate an ability to not perpetuate stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and enhance active community participation in solution development.
- Replicable: Entries can be replicated and adapted by others at low cost to ensure broader implementation and uptake as quickly as possible in similar settings.
- Scalable: Entries must demonstrate how they can be scaled beyond pilot programmes to large scale responses that can be implemented at greater/national scale.
- Affordable: Entries must demonstrate affordability (low-cost or no-cost to the end users) within resource limited settings or other similar settings as detailed in the individual challenges.
- Sustainable: Entries must demonstrate how they are implementable in the longer term (beyond the lifecycle of prize funding) using the resources that already exist or which can be incremental to existing service delivery.
- Achieving substantive change: Successful entries are expected to change the thoughts, processes and other barriers that prevent people living in resource limited settings from receiving the best care possible within the resources (financial and other) available, demonstrating a clear benefit to the people and systems targeted.
How to Apply
All Challenge Entries must be submitted online via given website.
For more information, please visit Positive Action Challenges.
