Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

NeoBreathe is the world's first foot operated newborn resuscitation system, and empowers frontline health workers to save lives of newborns with birth asphyxia. It is being manufactured and sold commercially across countries, seeks funds to build and test a scaling plan to reach impact at scale. This frees one hand of the user from the task of bag compression - thus allowing the single operator, for the first time ever, to hold the face-mask with both hands.

We are using sector leading business intelligence tools to find, mobilize, treat and reintegrate every women with fistula in two regions of Madagascar.

Millions of children in low resource settings are at high risk of poor development due to factors such as undernutrition, inadequate stimulation and maternal depression. Evidence based interventions to address these risk factors exist, but often as a separate and overlapping packages delivered through disjointed systems, therefore posing problems in scale-up. We propose three innovations to address this.

We propose the use of mobile phone technology to help caregivers track and respond to young children's developmental progress in a timely manner. Caregivers/parents will be trained on how to record developmental milestones achieved by their children in real time. The immediate benefits of the innovation are that when children's development is tracked, developmental delays will be identified and dealt with early.

Approximately 14 million infants per year in low to middle income countries (LMIC) are at risk from neonatal jaundice (NNJ) progressing to extreme hyperbilirubinemia (EHB) and brain damage. Nearly 80% of the 481,000 cases of EHB are in LMIC because infants are identified too late or health facility treatment is inaccessible or inadequate. New, low-cost, easy to use screening and phototherapy treatment technologies enable our proposed redesign of care delivery in LMIC to save infant brains.

Adolescent mothers experience greater parental stress and are less cognitively prepared for parenting compared with adult mothers, impacting cognitive development in their children. This is a sustainable home-based child stimulation training, and child nutrition for vulnerable adolescent mothers using a peer-led social marketing model championed by adolescent mothers, “Adolescent Mother Cheer leaders" (AMCLs) who will be trained on use of social marketing popular with adolescents (facebook, whatapp, sms) to design appropriate child stimulation activities to share in networks.

Breastfeeding is one of the most powerful interventions to reduce child deaths and promote cognitive development. In Kenya, less than half of infants are exclusively breastfed for 6 months. Women are faced with misinformation, a lack of social support and limited access to expert nutrition consultation. To address these issues, we will test three tools by combining them in an online support network - “Walezi Pamoja" (Nurturing Together) - for mothers in Africa's most internet-connected country.

Globally, one in every 100 children lives with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, majority of the children reside in lower middle-come countries (LMICs) and remain undetected and untreated, due to lack of awareness, services and skilled resources.

Informal daycares make up 83% of child-facing institutions operating in underprivileged neighborhoods; most are squalid, not-fit-for-purpose. Despite the poverty of service, working mothers still pay to leave their children in them, bereft of alternatives. Tiny Totos partners with these childcare providers and through training and technical and financial support, support them to provide safe, secure and stimulating environments for children.

500 children under age 3 currently live incarcerated with their mothers across Mexico. These children, don`t have their basic rights guaranteed, nor rely on services that should allow them to have a normal physical, emotional, cognitive, & social development. These children are repeatedly exposed to inappropriate, dangerous and potentially traumatic events. We work to administer an integrated evidence-informed intervention, "Health Care Model for Mothers and their Children Living in Prison".