USAID (United States Agency for International Development), in partnership with the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, DFID (UK Department for International Development) and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), has launched the sixth round of ‘Saving Lives of Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development.’
Under this program, a call is made for groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of childbirth.
The program is interested in supporting approaches that integrate the latest behavior change approaches with scientific and/or technological advances and service delivery platforms into radical solutions for widespread impact on maternal and newborn health.
Funding Priorities
- Science & Technology: bold ideas for scientific and technological advances that prevent, detect or treat maternal and newborn problems, prior to conception, during the antenatal period, at the time of birth and in the early postnatal period in the home, community or in peripheral health facilities.
- Service Delivery: bold ideas for new approaches to provide high-quality labor and delivery services and pre and postnatal care, including postpartum family planning and PMTCT.
- Demand: bold ideas for empowering and engaging women of reproductive age, their families and their communities at large to practice healthy behaviors and be aware of and access health care during pregnancy, childbirth and the early postnatal period, especially the first two days after birth. These should be ideas that reduce economic, social and political barriers to seeking, accessing, and receiving evidence-based care.
Funding Categories
- Seed Funds: To support the development and validation of ideas capable of impacting health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies in low-resource settings. Seed funding generally be $250,000 USD per project for up to two (2) years.
- Validation Funds: To introduce and validate the effectiveness of innovations to reach proof-of-concept. Funding generally be $250,000 USD per project for up to two (2) years.
- Transition to Scale Funds: To develop, refine, and rigoursly test the impact of integrated solutions that have previously measured promising health outcomes in a controlled or limited setting and have the potential to credibly scale to improve the lives of millions of pregnant women and newborns in multiple countries. Transition funding is limited to integrated solutions that unite technology, service delivery, and demand.
For more information, please visit https://savinglivesatbirth.net/apply.