Deadline: 13 November 2019
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is currently accepting proposals for the Round 24 of the Grand Challenges Exploration on the topic of “Innovations for Improving the Impact of Health Campaigns”.
The Foundation is seeking innovative solutions that accelerate the improvement of coverage, reach, efficiency, and effectiveness of health campaigns. The Foundation is looking for innovations in approaches, practices, or tools that dramatically improve the planning and microplanning, implementation / operations, and monitoring and evaluation that will lead to improved effectiveness of campaigns.
In order to contribute to the development and spread of campaign “best practices”, a solution should be applicable to campaigns beyond the context in which it is originally tested (e.g. applicable in multiple lower- to middle-incomes countries and/or applicable across multiple types of health campaigns such as immunization, NTDs, malaria, or nutrition).
The Foundation is especially interested in novel approaches that draw on innovation from large-scale delivery models outside of the health sector, which may include interventions used in the private sector.
Successful proposals should consider the following phases of campaign delivery:
- Planning and microplanning: This includes the planning processes – led by governments and often supported by partners – at the national, sub-national, facility, or community levels. Overall planning supports the mobilization of information and resources needed to conduct the campaign, and microplanning specifically addresses the detailed, delivery-level planning required to reach intended populations with the health intervention. Innovations might include/consider:
- Modeling and analytics to test, identify, and recommend more effective implementation approaches (e.g. modeling to identify optimal location of campaign fixed sites and outreach posts in order to improve community access).
- Novel or nontraditional information or data sources to improve the accuracy of planning (e.g. geospatial data to improve population estimation or location and more accurately plan for and target campaign delivery).
- Technologies for developing and using community maps or populations that can help campaigns to better reach their intended age groups or sub-populations.
- Interactive or adaptive microplans that better incorporate past or real-time data (e.g. based on prior campaign performance or operational monitoring data) to guide planning and implementation.
- Increased automation of microplans (e.g. updating, adapting microplans for other platforms).
- Implementation / operations: Improvement in this area may encompass all aspects of campaign operations, ranging from logistics management, identification and reach of target populations, delivery of interventions, management of human resources (including payments, incentives, and training), data collection & analysis, and supervision. Innovations might include/consider:
- Novel approaches to leverage data, maps, or other information or data to better identify and reach high-risk or unreached (e.g. “zero dose”) populations.
- Approaches to delivering campaigns in a way that prioritize high-risk or vulnerable populations.
- Leveraging of novel partnerships such as linking with other disease control programs, community initiatives, or religious or traditional structure that may improve campaign outcomes.
- Use of innovative technologies to support logistics management, campaign supervision, data collection and use.
- Monitoring and evaluation: Campaigns rely on monitoring and evaluation both during and after the campaign to understand campaign performance, identify populations that require post-campaign mop-up or targeting, to inform post-campaign improvement activities and routine system strengthening and identify lessons learned. Additionally, although M&E has not been used to systematically test and identify promising or best practices that may be replicated across geographies or campaign types, there is an opportunity to improve the use of iterative testing or operations research to identify best practices. Innovations might include/consider:
- Novel approaches to understanding the effectiveness of campaign planning and implementation while campaigns are ongoing or during post-campaign evaluations.
- Approaches for measuring and incorporating real time process, quality, and coverage improvement during campaigns.
- Methods of identifying, testing, and disseminating lessons learned and promising or best practices.
Award Information
Awards of $100,000 USD are made in Phase I. Phase I awardees may 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.
Criteria for success include solutions that:
- Are transformative, novel, or innovative. These interventions will significantly change the way in which campaigns are planned, conducted, or evaluated by proposing new ways of working, leveraging lessons from other sectors, or increasing transparency and effectiveness.
- Could be used by various health campaigns beyond the campaign in which the innovation is originally conceptualized or tested, such as for immunization (measles, yellow fever, meningitis, etc.), neglected tropical diseases (trachoma, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis etc.), nutrition (vitamin A, deworming), malaria (bed net distribution, seasonal malaria chemoprophylaxis), and polio.
- Could be used in various low- and middle-income countries beyond the country in which the innovation is originally conceptualized or tested.
- Can be designed, tested, and scaled as a “best practice”.
- Can be applied in low- and middle-income countries.
- Are cost effective.
How to Apply
Interested applicants can apply online via the given website.
For more information, please visit https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/innovations-improving-impact-health-campaigns-round-24