Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

David Eschenbach and his team from the University of Washington in the U.S. will determine the effect of disturbances in the vaginal microbiome on preterm birth. Their research will investigate how specific vaginal bacterial infections and changes in the female reproductive tract are associated with preterm birth.

Stephen Lye at Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada and his team will initiate a pilot study that will use a systems biology analysis of genomic, proteomic and plasma markers to identify novel pathways and biomarkers to preterm birth, as well as define the risk of preterm birth in pregnant women. Previous efforts to identify pathways or biomarkers associated with preterm birth have focused on single methodological approaches.

Innovators are testing whether a mental health intervention for mothers who are victims of sexual violence has a significant and positive effect on brain development of their infants. The intervention will be delivered as part of a post-natal health program, using a delivery system that can be duplicated in similar low-resource environments.

Rice University, the University of Malawi, Baylor College of Medicine, the Ministry of Health, and 3rd Stone Design will partner to: (1) produce clinic-ready bCPAP systems and submit paperwork for regulatory approval; (2) implement a novel campaign to educate mothers about the availability of life-saving treatment for RDS and to overcome fear of treatments involving tubing and oxygen; (3) scale-up bCPAP country-wide to all central and district hospitals in Malawi; train nursing, clinical and technical staff to use and maintain bCPAP; track impact on neonatal mortality from RDS; and (4) perf

PremieBreathe has built a functional infant breathing aid for $450, one tenth the price of commercial models. The device, a humidified high flow nasal cannula (HHFNC), is the gold standard of non-invasive neonatal respiratory care in high-income countries. With the support of Saving Lives at Birth, PremieBreathe will conduct initial trials at Ayder Referral Hospital in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, and identify design, manufacturing, and distribution partners to prepare for scaled production and dissemination.

There is international consensus that syringe pumps are an essential medical device to support care of mothers and newborns at district hospitals. Yet, they are often unavailable in low-resource settings because of high cost, technical complexity, and lack of brand name consumables. The project's idea is to scale AutoSyp, a low cost, low power, syringe pump in maternity and neonatal wards of hospitals in Malawi.

Drawing on 10 years of experience developing and delivering essential newborn care training, this project will develop 3D games using an iterative co-design process in UK and Kenya so it excites users and addresses needs and preferences. This project will explore incentives for learning and develop data capture tools to understand who is playing as well as where and when they are playing. This project will also design a test of the effectiveness of our training in Kenya, explore how to extend the approach to maternal care and plan for dissemination and testing.

One of the reasons oxygen therapy is not reaching the many thousands of babies and children it could save is due to the fact that electricity is not always available in small health facilities. To address this problem, this team has successfully developed FREO2, an electricity-free oxygen concentrator which runs on the energy from water flowing in a nearby stream, and which requires no fuel. This project will enable a major field trial in a health center in Western Uganda, where the design for this innovation will be refined in close collaboration with the health workers.

The goal of this project is to improve newborn survival among low birth weight (LBW) infants through a daily prophylactic dose of bovine lactoferrin (bLF). A two-stage project will be conducted with formative research followed by randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the appropriate daily dose of bLF and its efficacy in preventing neonatal infections.

Save the Children proposes an affordable and exclusive point-of-care diagnostic device for accurate measurement and interpretation of key vital signs (oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and temperature) among young infants (0-59 days) and children (2-59 months). It is equipped with a unique universal pulse oximeter sensor. The device will improve the quality of pneumonia case management and possible serious bacterial infections at community and health facility levels in low-resource settings.