Dear Colleagues,
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced the 2018 Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funding opportunities. The program supports projects addressing global health and development challenges related to:
Innovations in Immunization Data Management, Use, and Improved Process Efficiency
Within this call to promote the effective use of timely and relevant data to drive programmatic performance, and thus increase the number of children vaccinated globally, the Foundation is looking for innovative ideas in the following specific areas:
- Innovative ideas for improving the measurement approaches for immunization data (e.g., process, equity, coverage indicators) with a focus on data use by program managers, triangulation across data sources, and methods to measure and quantify data use.
- Novel approaches for improving process efficiency that will lead to improved quality of service delivery.
Affordable, Accessible, and Appealing: The Next Generation of Nutrition
The Foundation desires to advance innovative technologies to enhance the availability and accessibility of affordable, nutritious foods for low-income consumers, working within the key constraint that these innovations must be relevant to market-based food systems in low and middle-income countries. Overall, our target population is young women, mothers, and children from 6-23 months of age. Accordingly, the proposed technologies funded must not undermine exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months of life.
Tools and Technologies for Broad-Scale Disease Surveillance of Crop Plants in Low-Income Countries
The goal of this topic is to solicit innovative tools and technologies for crop pests and disease surveillance over large geographic regions in low-income countries. The Foundation is looking for tools and approaches that have the potential to transform crop pest and disease surveillance globally, with a focus on low-income countries. Ideas that result in increased coverage of geographic area will be prioritized over ideas that increase diagnostic accuracy. Ideas that are applicable or adaptable to multiple crops and diseases/pests will be prioritized over ideas that are specific to only one crop or pathogen. Because the focus is on low-income countries, successful proposals will take into account small-scale, difficult-to-reach, intercropped farming systems with multiple pests and diseases.
Grants will be awarded in the amount of $100,000, and successful projects will be eligible to receive follow-on funding up to $1 million. The program requests innovative idea concept papers (limited to two pages) by May 2, 2018. No preliminary data is required.
Other Grand Challenges grant opportunities are as follows:
- Grand Challenges: Campylobacter spp. Transmission Dynamics in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
- Grand Challenges Explorations – Brazil: Data Science Approaches to Improve Maternal and Child Health in Brazil. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
- Grand Challenges Explorations – India (Round 4). Application deadline is March 31, 2018.
- Misk Grand Challenges: Activating Global Citizenship: Building the Next Generation of Global Citizens for the Global Goals. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
- Misk Grand Challenges: Reinventing Teaching and School Leadership: Preparing the Youth with the 21st Century Skills Needed for a Knowledge Economy. Application deadline is May 2, 2018.
- Grand Challenges for Development: Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge. Application deadline is April 12, 2018.
Thank you.
Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)