Deadline: 8 November 2017
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is currently accepting proposals for the 20th round of Grand Challenges Exploration on the topic “New Approaches for Improving Timeliness of Routine Immunizations in Low-Resource Settings” in order to reduce child mortality through novel approaches that improve quality of care in primary health facilities and prevention of vaccine preventable deaths.
Priorities
- Innovative ideas for improving timeliness of routine immunizations, specifically targeting those infants at risk for being left out of immunization programs from birth.
- Interventions that identify infants at risk for not receiving their first round of birth immunizations and improve the likelihood they receive them on time;
- Approaches to link home-births to health facilities or vaccine outreach sessions to ensure infants receive their first round of immunizations on time;
- Cost-effective, scalable approaches to improve the timeliness and coverage of infants receiving their first round of immunizations Approaches that focus on continuum of care linkages within the health sector (e.g. ANC connected to routine immunization follow up).
- Novel approaches to provide on-the-job training/mentorship to health care workers to improve quality of care through enhancing or updating health care worker skills on an integrated and routine basis.
- Alternatives to support supervision that improve management and delivery of routine immunization (either outreach or fixed site) and/or healthcare worker skills/quality of patient care. This could be done with workers at the community, health facility, or district/equivalent level;
- Approaches that take into consideration the latest literature on effective adult learning strategies;
- Approaches that are not disease-specific, designed to be done in parallel with government-lead supportive supervision, vertical in nature, or rely exclusively on a checklist;
- Solutions that improve quality of service delivery and have the potential to be taken to scale by low-resource governments, evaluated using DHIS2 or other government owned and collected data, and be focused on the public sector.
Grant Information
- Phase I projects have a term of 18 months beginning on the project start date. The amount awarded is up to $100,000 USD.
- Awards of $100,000 USD are made in Phase I. Phase I awardees have one opportunity to apply for a follow-on Phase II award of up to $1,000,000 USD.
Eligibility Criteria
- GCE is open to both foreign and domestic organizations, including non-profit organizations, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions.
- Successful proposals will include:
- A clear hypothesis underlying the proposed approach to improve uptake and timeliness of birth dose vaccination or healthcare worker skills and/or quality of care provided;
- Details on the design and pilot testing of the approach in their application.
- A plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the approach in improving timeliness of birth dose vaccination or health care worker quality of care and/or skill using established metrics;
- Outline of the design of the proposed approach/intervention;
- Consideration will be given to proposals identifying in low and middle income countries that support:
- Capacity building or new skills training—especially focusing on human-to-human interaction, with less reliance on digital technology;
- Innovations that involve building on, disrupting, or adapting existing systems. Successful proposals will describe how their approach would work within existing health systems or what change would need to occur within health systems for their approach to be effective; and,
- Projects that constitute transformative rather than incremental improvements and are deliverable and scalable in low-income countries.
- Preference will be given to proposals where the field work is done in India, Nigeria or Ethiopia.
- No additional preference will be given to proposals that address both timeliness and on-the-job training.
How to Apply
Applications must be submitted online via given website.
For more information, please visit GCE Novel Approaches.