Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Invites Innovations to Address Women’s Health Challenges
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has unveiled a unique opportunity for pioneering ideas in the field of women’s health research and development. Their recently launched “Opportunity Map” identifies crucial challenges, needs, and goals within women’s health R&D and offers a strategic roadmap for innovation. This initiative aims to bolster advancements in women’s health and bridge existing gaps in research and development.
Key Components of the Opportunity Map
The Opportunity Map comprises three primary components, delineating the landscape of women’s health R&D:
Broad Topics: This component categorizes topics into two distinct categories:
Cross-cutting topics: Encompassing areas such as data and modeling, research design and methodologies, regulatory and science policy, innovation introduction, social and structural determinants, and training and careers.
Issue-specific topics: Focusing on communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases and chronic conditions, and female-specific conditions.
Challenges to Address
The Women’s Health Innovation team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seeks groundbreaking innovations that align with the outlined opportunities within the Opportunity Map. While not all opportunities are within the scope of this Request for Proposals (RFP), they aim to support proposals addressing a wide range of issues. The overarching goal of this RFP is to catalyze efforts to fill gaps in women’s health R&D. The specific objectives are to:
Promote innovative solutions addressing the opportunities identified in the Opportunity Map.
Augment overall funding and resources allocated to women’s health R&D.
Showcase the effectiveness of investments in women’s health R&D.
Award Information
Each awarded project can receive funding of up to USD $150,000, with a project duration of up to 2 years, contingent on the proposed project’s scope. The foundation intends to fund up to 3 proposals for each of the 8 in-scope Opportunity Areas.
Areas of Interest
The foundation is particularly interested in proposals that address opportunities within the following topic areas from the Opportunity Map:
Data and Modeling: Enhancing data collection, strengthening capacity for sex- and gender-informed data collection, and addressing critical data gaps.
Research Design and Methodologies: Advancing sex- and gender-intentional research design, methods, and analysis.
Regulatory and Science Policy: Implementing sex- and gender-intentional regulatory and science policy frameworks that promote women’s health innovations.
Innovation Introduction: Strengthening the innovation ecosystem and pathways for scaling women’s health solutions.
Social and Structural Determinants: Incorporating social determinants of health into women’s health R&D to promote equitable and suitable women’s health products.
Training and Careers: Infusing a sex and gender lens throughout education and supporting women’s career advancement to foster innovation in women’s health.
Communicable Diseases: Evaluating the impact of infectious diseases, exploring links between microbes and chronic conditions, and developing innovations for infections disproportionately affecting women, especially during pregnancy.
Female-specific Conditions: Investigating the causes and progression of gynecological, reproductive, maternal, and life stage conditions, enhancing data collection and sharing methods, and creating innovations for prevention, diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment.
Eligibility Criteria
This initiative welcomes participation from nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions. It strongly encourages applications led by women or originating from women-led organizations, as well as proposals from institutions based in low- and middle-income countries. Proposals should align with local public health systems, and collaborative efforts are highly encouraged. Notably, individuals and organizations classified as individuals for U.S. tax purposes are ineligible for awards under this initiative.
Applicants must provide information about their organization’s tax status upon registration, as different terms and conditions may apply. The foundation may request additional information regarding tax status.
Ineligible Proposals
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will not consider funding for proposals that do not meet the following criteria:
Proposals unrelated to the improvement of women’s health.
Proposals that disregard health conditions based on gender differences.
Proposals lacking a clear connection to at least one opportunity outlined in the Opportunity Map, even if they pertain to a specific topic area.
Proposals addressing the out-of-scope topic areas of the Opportunity Map for this RFP (Non-Communicable Diseases and Partnerships).
Proposals exclusively targeting high-income countries.
Proposals focusing on lobbying efforts.
Proposals not easily scalable or not aligned with local needs for adoption.
For more details and to submit proposals, interested parties are encouraged to visit the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s official website. This initiative underscores the commitment to advancing women’s health and fostering innovation in this critical domain.
