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Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems. Each initiative is an experiment in the use of challenges to focus innovation on making an impact. Individual challenges address some of the same problems, but from differing perspectives.

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Testing an Integrated and Innovative Women-Centered Homestead Food Production Model as a Means to Improve Food Security, Nutrition and Women's Empowerment in Cambodia for Future Scale Up

Hou KroeunHelen Keller International (Cambodia)Kampong Cham, Cambodia
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
22 Dec 2015

Hou Kroeun of the Cambodia office of Helen Keller International will evaluate the additional impact of promoting gender equality on households’ food security and health. They will recruit households spanning 180 rural communities in Kampong Cham Province to evaluate the impact of a gender-transformative Enhanced Homestead Food Production intervention, which will provide agricultural training and resources through primary contact with the female head of household, as well as sessions addressing gender issues with all main-decision makers in the family. They will then test the impact of this women-centered approach on household food security and nutritional status.

Understanding Outcomes of Acutely Ill Undernourished Children

Ezekiel MupereCase Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, Ohio, United States
Grand Challenges
All Children Thriving
11 Dec 2015

GAP Year Program (Girls Achieve Power) - Using Sport to Empower Girls at Critical Time of Adolescent Transition

Saiqa MullickWits Health Consortium (Proprietary) LimitedSouth Africa
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
3 Dec 2015

Saiqa Mullick of Wits Reproductive Health & HIV Research Institute (RHI) in South Africa, along with Grass Root Soccer (GRS), Sonke Gender Justice, and the Population Council, will empower adolescent girls in South African townships as they progress in education by increasing their educational, health, social, and economic assets, while at the same time shifting gender attitudes and encouraging positive behavior among adolescent boys. The “Girls Achieve Power” (GAP) Year Program will work with schools and communities to encourage a culture of health and safety, and promote school retention among adolescent girls. Using soccer as a program platform, and enlisting local coaches as facilitators, the program will enable a healthy and productive progression for adolescent girls through secondary school. Aside from these direct benefits, the program will also expand the evidence base around the impact of asset-building approaches for adolescent girls.

A Novel Nano-Iron Supplement (IHAT) to Safely Combat Iron Deficiency and Anemia (IDA)

Andrew PrenticeMedical Research CouncilSwindon, United Kingdom
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
30 Nov 2015

Andrew Prentice of the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom will conduct a phase II clinical trial to test the ability of a unique nano iron compound to safely and more effectively treat iron-deficiency anemia in children. Iron-deficiency anemia is a common condition particularly in women and children in resource-poor settings and can be deadly. Current iron supplements have limited effects in these settings and undesirable side effects including increasing the risk of infectious diarrhea in children which causes severe morbidity and mortality. They previously developed a compound iron hydroxide adipate tartrate that acts like dietary iron as it can be directly absorbed in humans keeping it away from any resident intestinal pathogens that also use it as a nutrient source. They will perform an intervention study with 600 iron-deficient anemic children in The Gambia and compare their compound with the current supplement to see if it can normalize iron levels without the side effects.

Normalizing Tuberculosis Granuloma Vasculature and Matrix to Improve Drug Delivery and Efficacy

Rakesh JainGeneral Hospital CorporationBoston, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
23 Nov 2015

Rakesh Jain of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. will develop a new treatment strategy for tuberculosis to boost the activity of existing anti-tuberculosis drugs. Tuberculosis is one of the most infectious diseases in the world. Current treatments are lengthy poorly tolerated and do not eradicate latent infections which are found in around one third of the general population and contribute to drug resistance. During latent infection the tuberculosis bacteria are dormant and reside in small inflammatory areas in the lungs known as granulomas. These granulomas are surrounded by abnormal blood vessels and dense tissue that they hypothesize make it difficult for drugs to permeate. They will use a small animal disease model and patient lung samples to test whether co-treatment with anti-angiogenics and anti-fibrotics can normalize the blood vessels and improve the delivery of anti-tuberculosis drugs thereby increasing their activity and potentially shortening treatment duration.

Umodzi - Men, Women, Boys and Girls in Alliance to Achieve Gender Equality

Thokozani MwenyekondeCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
19 Nov 2015

Thokozani Mwenyekonde from CARE in Malawi is implementing the Umodzi project to promote gender equality for women and girls by engaging adolescent girls and boys, along with supportive adult male and female role models, to integrate gender equitable attitudes and behavior in schools as a basis for changing attitudes nationwide. Umodzi, which means "oneness" in the local Chichewa language, will build upon and adapt existing gender equality approaches including integrating efforts into the school curriculum, training teachers who convene teen club meetings, and working with adults who are also engaged in CARE's pro-women agriculture and savings programs in the school catchment areas.

Digital Sub-Wallets for Increased Financial Empowerment of Women

Lauren HendricksCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
19 Nov 2015

Lauren Hendricks and team at CARE in Uganda will analyze whether motivating women to use mobile financial technology increases their involvement in making household financial decisions, and subsequently improves family health and education. They will develop mobile money subwallets for specific purposes such as school fees and pregnancy so that women can more securely manage their savings. They will also work with influential members of a subset of households to help promote gender equality and develop a consensus towards a household financial action plan.

Promoting Female Empowerment at the Household Level with Family Planning Use, Financial Literacy and Gender Sensitization Education Among Couples in Ibadan, Nigeria

Funmilola OlaOlorunUniversity of Ibadan, College of MedicineIbadan, Nigeria
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
18 Nov 2015

Funmilola OlaOlorun of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Neetu John of the International Center for Research on Women, in the U.S. will conduct a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a multi-pronged approach for empowering Nigerian women within the household and thereby the wider community. Their program targets both partners of couples, both individually and together, and involves training on gender socialization and finance, and access to family planning. The aim is to generate rigorous evidence on how to promote gender equality in household decision-making and improve family health and wellbeing.

A Synthetic Biology Platform for Rapid Generation of Highly Diverse Natural Product-Like Compounds Active Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Mike TyersUniversité de MontréalMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
18 Nov 2015

Michael Tyers of the University of Montreal in Canada will develop a synthetic biology platform to generate vast libraries of natural product-like compounds and use them to identify new drugs for tuberculosis. Traditional drug discovery screens require expensive chemical libraries that are limited in size and scope. Many existing drugs are derived from the natural products of microbes which perform a wide variety of biological functions. This functional diversity is reflected by their structural diversity which is generated by the combinatorial action of hundreds of thousands of different enzymes. They will exploit this natural manufacturing process for the relatively simple and low-cost production of millions to billions of chemically-diverse natural product-like compounds. This will be achieved by expressing different combinations of the enzymes in yeast artificial chromosomes which then allows screening directly in the yeast without the need for costly and time-consuming chemical extraction and purification. Using this approach they will perform a pilot screen to identify new compounds that inhibit the growth of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

Girls for Health: Empowering Rural Girls' Transition from School to Employment as Health Workers

Fatima AdamuFederal University Birnin KebbiBirnin Kebbi, Nigeria
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
16 Nov 2015

Fatima Adamu from the Federal University Birnin Kebbi in Nigeria will support the transition of adolescent girls from secondary school into heath-related careers such as medicine, midwifery, and nursing to address the shortage of female health workers specifically in rural northern Nigeria. Social norms dictate that women only receive reproductive care from females, so a shortage means that many, particularly in the North, do not receive any health care during pregnancy. Additionally, women who pursue careers are more likely to have children later, which is associated with a healthier life. They will integrate existing and new education strategies, including coaching particularly female teachers in student-centered learning methods, to improve core academic and vocational training, and enhance life skills for girls. Their approach will be tested using a controlled trial.

Epigenetic and Biological Markers of Preterm Birth, Fetal Growth, Early Childhood Growth and Neurodevelopment: Expanding the Scope of AMANHI Pregnancy Biorepository Cohort

Rajiv BahlWorld Health OrganizationGeneva, Switzerland
Grand Challenges
All Children Thriving
14 Nov 2015

Empowering Women and Increasing Sanitation: Making the Rural WASH Market Work

Sarah van BoekhoutWaterSHED CambodiaPhnom Penh, Cambodia
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
11 Nov 2015

Sarah van Boekhout and the team of WaterSHED in Cambodia will further catalyze the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) market by developing a women’s mentorship network and a special marketing program in order to improve the productivity and decision-making power of women in rural Cambodia. This project focuses on the success of female entrepreneurs in the market for WASH products and sevices. Members of the capacity-building and mentorship network, branded as the WEwork collective, will receive support and training on personal, professional, and community leadership; business planning; and financial literacy. This approach will be tested with more than 200 women across eight target provinces in Cambodia, and will emphasize community-driven peer coaching and support. WaterSHED will also reshape WASH marketing tools and strategies in order to better reach rural women consumers and to promote the success of business women in the supply chain. The outcomes of this project will better inform the design of women’s economic empowerment programs worldwide.

A Win-Win for Gender, Agriculture and Nutrition: Testing a Gender-Transformative Approach from Asia in Africa

Laurent UwumuremyiCAREAtlanta, Georgia, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
10 Nov 2015

Laurent Uwumuremyi and team at CARE in Burundi will evaluate the impact of an intensive gender transformative approach among women smallholder farmers relative to a current “gender-light” approach for delivering income, food security and women’s empowerment outcomes through agricultural development interventions. Their transformative approach focuses more deeply on gender by generating awareness of the issues, building personal skills, and directly challenging underlying inequalities through dialogue and collective action involving male relatives and the wider community. They will train facilitators and recruit a total of 7,500 women in two provinces in Burundi for a four-year study. The research will provide essential evidence-based policy recommendations for the agricultural sector to help improve global food security and well-being.

ListenUp: Amplifying Girls' Voices Through Sanitary Pads and Health Information

Elizabeth OmbechZanaAfrica GroupNairobi, Kenya
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
10 Nov 2015

Elizabeth Ombech of ZanaAfrica Group Ltd. in Kenya seeks to implement safe, accurate, and cost-effective reproductive health innovations for girls—in the form of disposable sanitary pads coupled with girl-centered reproductive health information and resources—and to evaluate this approach against traditional facilitation-based methods for impact on girls’ educational attainment, sexual behavior, reproductive health, and self-determination in order to expand the global evidence base surrounding the role of menstrual health-focused interventions in gender parity, health, and development.

Pre-Clinical Development of a Pan-Species Multi-Stage Universal Vaccine for the Malaria Eradication Agenda

Louis SchofieldJames Cook UniversityCairns, Queensland, Australia
Grand Challenges
Global Health Interventions
9 Nov 2015

Louis Schofield of James Cook University in Australia will develop a broad-spectrum malaria vaccine that is effective against different life-cycle stages of multiple species of the causative Plasmodium parasite. More than one third of the world's population is at risk of contracting malaria. However developing an effective vaccine is challenging because humans are infected by five quite distinct Plasmodium species. In addition the parasites pass through very different developmental stages including sporozoites which mosquitoes inject into the human bloodstream a disease-causing blood stage and a transmissible sexual stage. Using Grand Challenges Explorations funding they have already identified a surface oligosaccharide antigen conserved in several Plasmodium species that when combined with generic carriers and adjuvants can generate a strong immune response that blocks several life-cycle stages in animal models. They will perform further key preclinical evaluations to determine the full efficacy of the vaccine and whether it should proceed to testing in humans.

The Fifth H: Her - Empowering Girls Through 4-H's Methodology of "Learning by Doing"

Appiah Kwaku Boateng4-H GhanaKoforidua, Ghana
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
6 Nov 2015

Appiah Kwaku Boateng of 4-H Ghana in Ghana will support 600 new and existing 4-H school and community clubs in Ghana, which teach livelihood and life skills such as business planning, farming and communication, with a stronger focus on girls. This will serve to enhance the economic and education opportunities particularly for young girls who are more vulnerable to unemployment. They will recruit and train more women to run the clubs and engage girls by acting as mentors, and to act as district advisers. They aim to develop a successful approach that can then be implemented across Africa.

Smart Payment Schemes as a Gateway to Women's Financial Inclusion and Socioeconomic Empowerment

Rohini PandeHarvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
3 Nov 2015

Rohini Pande of Harvard University in the U.S. will conduct two large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which will investigate whether female-friendly modifications to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGS) program in India can improve program efficiency and increase rural women's employment, financial inclusion, and empowerment. They will also test the efficacy of transparency tools to document wage payment delays to understanding whether holding local implementers accountable can decrease payment delays to women.

Measuring Change in the Decision-Making Role of Pastoral Women at the Household Level as a Result of their Financial and Social Empowerment

Kathleen ColsonThe BOMA Project, Inc.Manchester Center, Vermont, United States
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
28 Oct 2015

Kathleen Colson of The BOMA Project, Inc. in Kenya will investigate, measure and document how participation in BOMA’s Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP)—a holistic two-year program of sequenced interventions—translates to such gender-influenced outcomes as increased household financial decision-making by women, increased education opportunities for girls and increased food security and use of healthcare by the household. REAP is a high-impact poverty graduation program that addresses the geographic and socio-economic context of the arid and semi-arid lands of Africa, where the harsh effects of climate change and endemic extreme poverty persistently undermine the well-being of women and children. The project provides ultra-poor Kenyan women cash grants, business skills training, mentoring and the opportunity to set up their own business to help lift their families out of poverty. Giving women more power over household spending tends to lead to improved family health care and education. They will recruit 750 women living in extreme poverty in pastoral communities to their two-year poverty graduation program. Upon these women exiting REAP, they will analyze its impact on improving the education and social standing of women and girls, and the physical and financial wellbeing of their families.

Improving Women's Access and Usage of Digital Financial Services

Flora MyambaResearch on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA)Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Grand Challenges
Women and Girls
28 Oct 2015

Flora Myamba of Repoa Ltd. in Tanzania will evaluate different methods for motivating women to use mobile financial services by performing a randomized control trial in Tanzania. Access to mobile money platforms in developing countries can help alleviate poverty, but many people, particularly women, do not own a mobile phone, and if they do, it is unclear whether they will use it for financial purposes. They will recruit 2,000 low-income women in Tanzania and provide them with different types of mobile phones and data packages to determine which combination leads to the biggest uptake of digital financial services, and analyze how it improves the welfare of women.

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