The Grand Challenges Network - a family of global partners fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems - announced awards under seven different request-for-proposals launched at the 2023 Grand Challenges Annual meeting, held in Dakar, Senegal. To-date awards have been awarded to 88 principal investigators in 30 different countries.

Grand Challenges Network Initiatives Highlights Photo Slideshow

Grand Challenges Network Initiatives Highlights - October 20

2023 Grand Challenges Annual Meeting Call-to-Action

Leon Tshilolo of Institut de Recherche Biomédicale 1-Health in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Johnny Mahlangu of University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa will perform a pilot study using a mobile laboratory to conduct sickle cell disease (SCD) screening and patient follow-up in hard-to-reach and rural areas of the DRC.

Improving Sickle Cell Disease Care in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with Mobile Lab Screening

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Accelerating Catalyzing Solutions for Climate Change's Impact on Health, Agriculture, and Gender

Celestina Innih of Kogi State Fadama Coordination Office in Nigeria with&nbsp; Cynthia Nwobodo of University of Nigeria Nsukka also in Nigeria will develop advisory services for rural women in Nigeria to make informed decisions for climate change adaptation.

Promoting Gender Equality Through Sustainable Access to Climate Information

Opportunities to Advance Women's Health Innovation

Marguerite Hood-Pishchany of the University of North Carolina in the U.S. will characterize the metal nutrient dependencies of vaginal microbial communities to design interventions that support communities associated with a low risk of diseases linked to bacterial vaginosis.

Exploiting Metal Dependencies to Support a Low-Risk Vaginal Microbiome

Strengthening Childcare Models that Advance Women's Economic Power

Blessing Adesiyan of the MH Institute for WorkLife Care and Policy Research Africa in Nigeria will establish 300 high-quality, cost-efficient childcare hubs across three states in Nigeria to increase women's economic potential.

Caring Blocks: Neighborhood Childcare Hubs to Advance Women's Economic Power in Nigeria

Strengthening Health and Disease Modeling for Public Health Decision Making in Africa

Nicole Wolter of Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Limited in South Africa will establish an African modeling partnership between South Africa, Malawi, and Kenya to ensure that serosurveillance data for vaccine-preventable diseases are effectively incorporated into epidemiological models to guide immunization programs and policies.

Modeling Multi-Pathogen Serosurveillance Data for Public Health Impact

Grand Challenges Africa: Accelerating Catalyzing Solutions for Climate Change's Impact on Health, and Gender

Blaise Bougnom of the Centre for Research in Infectious Diseases in Cameroon will develop models to predict the impact of climate change on the spread of clinically relevant, drug-resistant bacteria in maternity wards in Cameroon and Burkina Faso to enhance public health preparedness.

Predicting Drug-Resistant Bacterial Dynamics in Maternity Wards of Burkina Faso and Cameroon under Climate Change: A Precision Public Health Study

Taro Yamauchi of Hokkaido University in Japan will explore a community-based approach for menstrual hygiene management through fieldwork across different socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts in Japan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cameroon, and Zambia.

Co-Creation of Women's Health in Asia and Africa: Improving Menstrual Hygiene Management

Richa Verma of Siddhi Vinayak Agri Processing Private Limited in India will support women entrepreneurs and women-led Farmer Producer Organizations in adopting climate-resilient potato varieties through a pilot program in four states in India.

Empowering Women Agripreneurs: Incubating Climate-Smart Potato Venture for Nutrition Market and Livelihood

Mary Mbithi of the University of Nairobi in Kenya will test a childcare model in Kenya's Machakos County to increase women's economic participation, reduce and redistribute the burden of unpaid care, and shift gender norms related to childcare.

Strengthening Childcare Models that Advance Women’s Economic Empowerment in Machakos County in Kenya

Bernard Bett of the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya will develop disease transmission models for two Aedes mosquito-borne arboviral diseases, dengue and chikungunya, and use the models to design decision support tools to guide surveillance and control of these diseases in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Modelling Aedes-borne Diseases for Improved Public Health Decision-Making in the Horn of Africa

Erica Andersen-Nissen of Hutchinson Center Research Institute of South Africa and Gerhard Walzl of Stellenbosch University, both in South Africa, will perform bronchoalveolar lavage in volunteers receiving the BCG or MTBVAC vaccine intradermally in the HVTN 605 clinical trial to delineate vaccine-induced lung immune responses and identify correlates of protection.

Characterization of Vaccine-Induced Immune Response in Lung Mucosa in Humans

Diana Karanja of COHESU in Kenya will develop a community health information system to reduce the burden of schistosomiasis in Kenya.

Empowering Women Through Climate-Responsive Community Health Information to Tackle Schistosomiasis

Shahid Yusuaf of Fincon Services with the Poverty Eradication Initiative in Pakistan will pilot test use of the AI-based mobile application Umeed Sey by community midwives to enhance maternal and newborn health services in Pakistan.

Sustainable Maternal and Newborn Child Health Initiative

Gaurav Mehta of the Dharma life Foundation gGmbH in Germany&nbsp; will establish Dharma Life Community Learning Centers in India that combine vocational training for mothers with early childhood care and education for their children to improve women's workforce participation, children's educational outcomes, and social acceptance of professional childcare.

Dharma Life Community Learning Centre Through "Better Skills Better Care"

Manda Kumari Karn of the Janaki Women Awareness Society in Nepal will support women farmers in Nepal to incorporate labor-saving technologies and non-agricultural sources of income and to participate in community-based responses to climate change.

Resilience for Women Through Climate-Smart Economic Transformation (RECET)

Aamirah Mussa of Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership in Botswana will pilot test a diagnostic screening program for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in adolescent girls and young women in Botswana to determine the infection burden and the cost effectiveness of the program.

Is Diagnostic Sexually Transmitted Infection Screening for Adolescent Girls and Young Women a Worthwhile Investment in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?

Daniel Oulai of Grainothèque in Cote d'Ivoire will support women farmers in the Tonkpi region of Cote d'Ivoire to improve their livelihoods through rice-fish farming.

Resilient Women Farmers in Côte d’Ivoire

Rapidemic in the Netherlands will collaborate with Mohammed Majam of Ezintsha in South Africa to develop a prototype for a molecular test for rapid multiplex diagnosis of chlamydia and gonorrhea, while determining the requirements for its deployment in South African primary care settings to serve hard-to-reach populations.

Revolutionizing Decentralized Diagnosis of Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Infections for Women Worldwide

Edita Magileviciute of the Caboverdean Ecotourism Association in Cape Verde will explore the potential of locally harvested seaweed as a biofertilizer to support rural women's livelihoods and agricultural development in Cape Verde.

Seaweed Biofertilizers for Climate Change Adaptation and Women Empowerment in Rural Cape Verde

Nirali Chakraborty of Metrics for Management in the U.S. with Population Services International will develop a measure of women's experience of healthcare using an approach that could be deployed more broadly for measurement.

A Global Measure of Women's Experience of Care that Improves Qualitative Measurement Development

Provat Saha of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Bangladesh will support women-led, rural agricultural microenterprises in Bangladesh in deploying a set of climate-smart technologies to enhance their productivity and resilience to climate change.

Empowering Women-Led Agricultural Microenterprises in Rural Bangladesh with Climate-Smart Technology

Zainab Samad of Aga Khan University in Pakistan will incorporate sex and gender as a cross-cutting theme embedded in medical education in Pakistan at Aga Khan University and Khyber Medical University.

Incorporating a Sex and Gender Lens into Medical Education in Pakistan

Dyness Kejo of the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Center in Tanzania will develop an affordable, ready-to-use therapeutic food based on amaranth to treat malnutrition in children in Tanzania.

Combating Malnutrition Using Safer, Affordable, and Nutritious Grain Amaranth Crop Products

Yacine Djibo of Speak Up Africa in Senegal will develop a set of indicators to guide increased incorporation of diverse women's perspectives into health research and development to ensure that women's health products are broadly suitable and accessible.

Driving Investment in Equitable and Appropriate Health Products and Services

Junaid Iqbal of Aga Khan University in Pakistan will test the effects of daily supplemental feeding for women in rural Pakistan to mitigate the negative effects of heat stress during pregnancy on maternal and neonatal health outcomes.

Nutritional Supplementation in Pregnancy to Neutralize Heat Stress

Mike Baiocchi of Stanford University in the U.S. will use LLMs to analyze conversational interviews with adolescent girls and young women in Kenya to identify causal mechanisms impairing their health within the potential interplay between living with HIV, mental health conditions, and gender-based violence.

Meeting Them Where They Are At: Using Large Language Models to Lower Barriers to Measuring the Impact of Gender-Based Violence on Mental Health and HIV Outcomes in Girls and Women in Kenya

Mesfin Gemeda of Addis Ababa Science and Technology University in Ethiopia with Essential in Kenya will develop a process for fermenting agricultural byproducts to generate low-cost, high-quality proteins for products to treat and prevent malnutrition.

Catalyzing a Biomanufacturing Breakthrough to Tackle Malnutrition

Rajshekhar Karpoormath of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa will test a set of potential anti-TB hit compounds against clinically relevant TB strains, using the results to generate optimized hit compounds for development of new anti-TB drugs.

Anti-TB Drug Discovery: Design, Synthesis, Evaluation, and Mechanistic Studies

Monika Shukla of Buzzworthy Ventures Private Limited in India will establish a women-led beekeeping network in India to enhance crop yields through bee pollination and improve women's livelihoods.

Queen Bees: Transforming Agriculture and Livelihoods Through Scientific Beekeeping

David Chiawo of Strathmore University in Kenya will develop an integrated approach that empowers women smallholder farmers in the Mount Kenya region to improve their livelihoods and adapt to climate change.

Empowering Women in Integrated Avocado Production and Market Enhancement

Martin Tarkpor of the Liberia Institute for Development Assessment and Research in Liberia will pilot test a battery rental system for women agricultural cooperatives to use to power their food processing equipment and sustainably increase their productivity and incomes.