Deadline: 24 February 2017
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada), UK’s Department of International Development (DFID), and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) have joined together to launch the seventh round of Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development.
The program seeks groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of delivery. This is the period when the majority of maternal and newborn deaths occur and the population that has been the most difficult to reach.
Innovative ideas that can leapfrog conventional approaches in following three main domains are invited:
- Science & technology;
- Service delivery;
- Demand-side innovation that empowers pregnant women, their families, and their communities 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.
Objectives
- Science & Technology: lack of dissemination and uptake of the most recent scientific evidence applicable to delivery of care in low-resource settings; lack of affordable and effective medical solutions appropriate for the community or clinic setting;
- Service Delivery: lack of quality health services, including inadequate numbers of trained, supported, motivated, equipped and properly located and supervised health staff and caregivers; and limited by operational bottlenecks;
- Demand: lack of opportunity, agency, ability, motivation, and empowerment to access timely health care or adopt healthy behaviors before, during, and after pregnancy.
Areas of Interest
- Promoting healthy behaviors and generation of demand for services, including voluntary timing and spacing of pregnancy
- Preventing and addressing the consequences of preterm birth
- Increasing access to and sustained use of evidence-based, appropriate, quality care with particular emphasis on:
- Early uptake and retention in antenatal care and simple, low-tech methods of dating pregnancy
- Equity, including identifying and reaching the most vulnerable populations
- Accountability to stakeholders and families
- Eliminating mistreatment of women during birth
- Improving working conditions of and respect for birth attendants
- Better monitoring and management of labor to promote maternal and fetal survival and better monitoring and management of special newborn care
- Making the “old and boring” (but essential and good for maternal and newborn care) seem exciting (e.g. how to take, record, and act upon a blood pressure reading)
- Addressing key health system bottlenecks that have an outsized impact on maternal and newborn health services with particular emphasis on improving referral and transportation of mothers with complications and sick newborn, including links to facilities
- Addressing underlying gender, social and cultural barriers and/or opportunities
- Assessing and addressing the challenges of approaches or technologies proven to work in high-income settings but unproven in low-income settings such as antenatal steroids, progesterone, etc.
Please visit next page for funding information and eligibility criteria of the program.
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