SAVING LIVES AT BIRTH ROUND 5
The Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development partners invite global problem solvers to answer their fifth call for groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of childbirth.
The Challenge seeks to identify and develop transformative approaches that integrate new technologies, better service delivery models and improved "demand side" innovations that empower pregnant women and their families 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.
This year, in addition to the seed and transition awards used in previous rounds, the partners introduced a third funding stream. 'Validation' funds will be used to introduce and validate the effectiveness of innovations to reach proof-of-concept. Round 5 will also place an increased focus on advancing the most successful and transformational innovations as they transition to scale. The actual number of awards in each category varies.
The Challenge will be accepting applications starting February 16 through March 27, 2015 (closes at 2:00 p.m. ET).
For more information, join the Twitter Chat on February 12 and visit www.savinglivesatbirth.net/
Twitter Chat
To herald the launch of Round 5, join us for a live #SavingLivesRd5 Twitter chat this Thursday, February 12th at 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. ET. Joined by a panel of MNCH experts, Saving Lives at Birth will focus the discussion on the future of maternal and newborn health innovation. Follow @GCDSavingLives and #SavingLivesRd5 to participate. We hope you will join!
Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development partnership, launched in 2011, includes the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada), and the U.K’s Department for International Development (DFID).
***The Challenge
USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and DFID have joined together to launch Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development, to find the tools and approaches to help the mothers and newborns during their most vulnerable hours.
We seek 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.
We seek innovative ideas that can leapfrog conventional approaches in three main domains: (1) technology; (2) service delivery; and (3) “demand side” innovation that empowers pregnant women and their families 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.
Seeking Breakthroughs
Significant breakthroughs in innovation often come about when new ideas and disciplines are applied to long-entrenched problems. New technologies and approaches transform insurmountable development challenges into solvable problems. To harness this ingenuity, we encourage partnerships that bring together diverse expertise from non-traditional partners. And to foster sustainability, we encourage the private sector to bring their expertise and experience to bear on these problems.
How It Works
Five partners - USAID, the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and DFID - came together to support this single challenge. The World Bank is also an affiliate of this program. Projects will be jointly selected through a unified application process. Successful innovators will be funded and managed independently by one of two funding mechanisms – pooled resources from USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Government of Norway, or Grand Challenges Canada – and supported collectively as a community of innovators by all five partners.
Building a Community of Innovators
Partners will work with this community to foster learning and continued innovation. Awardees will receive support and networking assistance from each of the partners, engage with other innovators, and participate in high-level meetings including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual Grand Challenge meetings.
Types of Awards
We will invest in a portfolio of projects. Through this portfolio, we will seek groundbreaking innovations by providing:
- 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,
- Validation Funds to introduce and validate the effectiveness of innovations to reach proof-of-concept, and
- 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.
Key Features
- A brief application.
- Rapid turnaround time. We aim to select awards within 5 months from the proposal submission deadline.
- Opportunities for shared learning and collaboration among innovators, funders and other public health experts.
- A review process designed to identify potentially groundbreaking ideas that show great promise.
What We’re Looking For
Interventions that:
- Substantially increase demand for and access to primary health interventions for women and newborns (for example, by at least 50 percent for interventions with low coverage);
- Substantially improve the quality of care as measured by health outcomes; and
- Improve and sustain healthy behavior.
Solutions Should
- Be "off the beaten track," daring in premise, and clearly differentiated from standard practice;
- Enhance uptake, acceptability and provide for sustained use (potential for sustainability as defined as cost-recovery, sustained use, and sustainable impact);
- Be low-cost or highly cost-effective solutions;
- Have a strong likelihood of achieving a substantial impact on one or more important adverse maternal, fetal, or neonatal health conditions;
- Be scalable in resource-poor settings;
- Be able to be monitored, measured and evaluated.
