Last week, Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham-Clinton, joined the leadership team of Saving Lives at Birth for their landmark announcement - a grant program aimed at improving maternal and infant safety in developing regions. As described on the organization's website,

"To accelerate substantial and sustainable progress against maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths at the community level, we need to harness the collective imagination and ingenuity of experts across a broad range of disciplines and expertise."

Partner organizations in this effort include the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Grand Challenges Canada, and The World Bank. Together, these private and governmental organizations are seeking innovative solutions to perinatal maternal and infant morbidity and mortality in rural, low-resource settings - and have issued a grand challenge: submit your idea for an intervention that can:

• Increase access to primary health care for women and newborns by at least 50%
• Substantially improve the quality of care as measured by health outcomes
• Lead to improved and sustained healthy behavior

Selected project team(s) will receive a grant that includes seed funding for the development of the project/product or funding for scaling the innovation to the point of implementation.

Three categories of innovation are sought:

• technology-based (devices or technologies to prevent, detect or treat maternal and newborn problems at the time of birth)
• healthcare services demand-based (technologies/ innovations that incentivize women to seek healthcare, and knowledge of healthy behaviors that can improve birth outcomes
• trained birth attendant based (increasing access to healthcare, training for birth attendants and methods for transporting sick moms and babies to medical facilities)

To watch the presentation of this project, go here and, please, spread the word.

Photo Courtesy of: www.savinglivesatbirth.net

Posted by: Kimmelin Hull, PA, LCCE

Published: March 16, 2011

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