Family Planning

Most young people in Tajikistan have limited contraceptive options, and data shows that 23% of married 20–24-year-old women have an unmet need. This contributes to unintended pregnancies and STIs. Sexuality education is also very limited. To expand contraceptive choice and improve SRH outcomes, youth need information/education, improved health-seeking behaviours and access to care. 21 youth-friendly service centres and 89 SRH facilities already exist–utilization, however, is still a challenge.

This innovation will eliminate unintended pregnancies and surgical+unsafe abortions in India. This will save lives, reduce unnecessary health expenditure & unwanted births. This will be achieved by addressing two root causes of unintended pregnancies. The first is lack of information about contraceptive choices among men and women, especially young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. Second is lack of timely and affordable supply of contraceptives in disadvantaged areas.

Worldwide, 225 million women have unmet contraceptive needs. Contraceptive implants are increasing in popularity; however, uptake is slowed because most Community Healthcare Workers (CHWs) cannot administer implants. The SubQ Assist is designed to facilitate this task-shifting by ensuring a safe and accurate administration after almost no training, dramatically changing the availability of implants to underserved women.

Very young adolescents in Madagascar need enhanced access to comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) before and during puberty to prepare against threats of sexual coercion and violence, unintended pregnancy, and childhood marriage. The Malagasy adolescent birth rate is 145, as compared to 95 for neighboring nations, meaning that one in three Malagasy girls will become a mother before she is 18 years old. The prevalence of child marriage is also one of the highest in the region, at 48%.

Kevin Osteen of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. is developing a three-dimensional cell model that mimics the lining of the human uterus (endometrium), including different cell types and a vascular system, that can be used for affordable medium-to-high-throughput compound screening to discover new contraceptives with minimal adverse side effects. The endometrium is a multi-layered tissue that supports embryo implantation and maintains pregnancy and responds to hormonal cues to undergo renewal during each menstrual cycle.

Charles Easley of the University of Georgia Research Foundation in the U.S. is developing a complete human spermatogenesis model system for high-throughput drug screens to identify new compounds that reversibly block the maturation of sperm and could be used as male contraceptives. A simple oral male contraceptive would lessen the burden on women, particularly those who suffer from adverse side-effects of hormonal contraceptives.

Darryl Russell of the University of Adelaide in Australia is seeking safer contraceptives that block ovulation without altering hormone levels and cause fewer side effects using an automated in-vitro screening platform that measures cell adhesion in the cumulus-oocyte complex, which is required to release the oocyte from the ovary. In Phase I, they built the screening platform by isolating cumulus-oocyte complexes from mice, culturing them in fibronectin-coated multi-well plates, and quantifying adhesion in a 96-well plate format using an automated assay.

Andrew Hopkins of the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom is developing a screening platform using live human sperm to identify new male contraceptive drugs that inhibit two separate activities required for fertilization, namely motility and formation of the acrosome on the head of sperm cells. Currently, the only effective, widely available, and reversible form of male contraception is the condom, which has limited appeal. Alternative male contraceptives are needed to help reduce the estimated 89 million unintended pregnancies each year.

Teresa Woodruff of Northwestern University in the U.S. is developing automated, high-throughput tools using mouse ovarian follicles and endocrine loops between interacting organs integrated with a series of microfluidic and microdynamic systems to identify improved contraceptives with longer-term action and lower cost for low-resource settings.

Patricia Donahoe and David Pepin of Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. are using a cell-based screening platform to develop a new class of hormonal contraceptive that works at the early stage of primordial follicle activation to prolong the contraceptive effect and reduce side effects, thereby promoting wider use particularly in the developing world. This early stage of follicle development in the ovary is suppressed by a hormone (Mullerian inhibiting substance or MIS) to regulate egg production.