2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action

**NOTE: This opportunity was open only to participants who registered for and attended the 2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting.

THE OPPORTUNITY

The Grand Challenges Annual Meeting fosters innovation and international collaboration to address the biggest challenges in global health and development. It has been held in 12 countries over the past 18 years and in a virtual format for two years. The 2023 meeting continues the Annual Meeting's goal to support a global community of problem solvers who work together to set an innovation agenda and do the breakthrough science to deliver on it – to go further and faster together.

THE CHALLENGE

This Call-to-Action provides an opportunity for Grand Challenges Annual Meeting participants to take action based on ideas they developed and people they met at the meeting. As noted by past applicants in their submitted proposals, the meeting provides diverse ways to combine expertise and perspectives to speed the impact of what would otherwise be separate work by individual investigators. The grants awarded for past Call-to-Action opportunities show this, and we hope that this year’ meeting will also provide ways to catalyze collaborative projects that yield a tangible solution to a key problem by the end of the grant.

Please note that there are multiple grant opportunities being launched at the Annual Meeting:

• Two that are open to meeting participants:
  1. This 2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action
  2. Collaboratory Platforms 2023: Democratizing Access to Technologies
• Additional grant opportunities that are publicly open, launched across the Grand Challenges family of initiatives

Funding

Each meeting participant will have one opportunity to apply as the primary applicant, on behalf of their institution, for a USD $100,000 grant or a collaborative USD $200,000 grant, both with an 18-month grant duration. Collaborative awards require the participation of at least two meeting participants from different institutions. While restricted to one application as the primary applicant, meeting participants may participate as collaborators in multiple collaborative applications. Priority will be given to new or newly expanded collaborations, rather than to existing collaborations seeking new funding.

We will give highest priority to proposed projects that:

• Contribute to a partnership network that empowers those with the local perspective required to direct the right approaches to the right parts of the problems to ensure success. We will prioritize projects led by investigators from low- and middle-income countries and a balanced representation of women principal investigators. Their collective action and directed energy will help solve today's key problems in global health, while building research networks ready to solve tomorrow’s.
• Are likely to yield a tangible answer to a question or solution to a problem within the grant term.
• Are explicitly aligned with the content within the meeting's scientific track sessions. Please note that individual proposals will be reviewed based on their alignment with one primary track and the specific content presented there (see meeting agenda), since we seek to provide an opportunity for participants to take action based on an idea that they developed and people they met during their participation in a scientific track. Eligible scientific tracks for this Call-to-Action are listed below.

Scientific tracks eligible for the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action

• Advancing Drug Discovery for Global Health
• Applying a Translational Lens to Global Health
• Artificial Intelligence & Medical Devices: Strengthening the Ecosystem for Development, Implementation, and Scale in LMICs
• Catalyzing Systems-level Agriculture Climate Adaptation in Africa
• Enhancing African Vaccine Manufacturing Through Technology and Training
• The Evolving Role of Pathogen Genomics in Public Health Surveillance
• Global Health Discovery Collaboratory: Enabling a Global Health R&D Network
• Innovations in Reproductive Health Technologies for Advancement of Global Health
• Key Ingredients for R&D Ecosystems and Accelerating Innovation in LMICs
• Malaria: Innovation for Eradication
• The Road Ahead: Opportunities for HIV Prevention and Cure
• Sickle Cell Disease: Global Burden and Therapeutic Opportunities
• Vaccine and Biologics Innovations for Global Health

We will not consider funding approaches that:

• Are not explicitly aligned with the specific content within the meeting scientific tracks listed above that are eligible for this request for proposals.
• Address the meeting scientific tracks that are not part of this request for proposals: Global Network and Partnership Building to Combat the Effects of Climate Change on Health and Looking Ahead to the Next 20 Years: Sharing Learnings and Best Practices for Grand Challenge Implementation and Partnership.