Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Global Grande Challenges – Increasing Demand for Vaccination Services

The Global Grande Challenge – Increasing Demand for Vaccination Services aims to increase demand for vaccination services, and thus increase the number of children vaccinated globally. The Challenge will fund innovative ideas in the following specific areas:

1. Novel approaches for providing practical knowledge about vaccines and vaccination services to caregivers, which may include:

• Familiarizing caregivers with information on where and when routine and/or campaign services are provided.
• Educating caregivers about how many times a child should be vaccinated and the importance of timely vaccination. Explain how a proposed intervention would very tactically increase the knowledge of when a child needs to be brought in for his or her first, subsequent, or campaign-related vaccination. Suggestions may include helping caregivers plan for completing subsequent visits.
• Addressing common concerns (multiple injections, post-vaccination discomfort) that may result in missed opportunities for vaccination.
• Empowering caregivers to ask for full vaccination services.

2. Novel ideas for improving the convenience and/or caregiver seeking of vaccination services; these may focus on:

• Approaches that use human-centered design to improve the convenience of accessing services from a caregiver perspective.
• Approaches that minimize wait time for caregivers, such as scheduling appointments, providing information as to wait times, and/or providing information regarding stock availability (may be linked to electronic registries).
• Approaches that reduce the “cost” of seeking services (i.e., time, lost wages, transport cost, discordance with social norms, etc.) while increasing the “benefit” (appreciation of vaccines, integrated services). Exclude direct monetary incentives.
• Approaches that provide a “nudge” for seeking vaccination services and translating intention into action. Do not submit proposals based on SMS (Short Message Service) reminders given their current emphasis/on-going support in operational research.

Successful proposals will include:

• A clear hypothesis underlying the proposed approach to improve immunization programs and/or improving the user experience of beneficiaries.
• Details on the design and pilot testing of the approach in their application.
• A plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the approach for improved measurement of the immunization program and/or improving the user experience of beneficiaries.
• Outline of the design of the proposed approach/intervention.
• Innovations that involve building on, disrupting, or adapting existing systems. Successful proposals will describe how their approach would work within existing health systems or what change would need to occur within health systems for their approach to be effective.

Additionally, the Foundation will consider proposals in low-income countries that:

• Are based on human-centered design principles
• Utilize latest thinking in social, economic, and behavioral research
• Do not increase burden upon frontline health workers
• Minimize perverse incentives (including incentives for falsification)
• Are relevant in multiple developing country settings
• Constitute transformative rather than incremental improvements and are deliverable and scalable in low-income countries

Amount: Grants of up to $100,000 each will be awarded for a period of 18 months.

Eligibility: Private and public organizations. Individuals must be affiliated with an organization to apply.

Link: https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/increasing-demand-vaccination-services-round-22

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