Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Kristin Wall of Emory University in the U.S. will develop a comprehensive approach to improve the uptake of intrauterine contraceptive devices shortly after birth, which is safe and effective but currently vastly underutilized for preventing unwanted pregnancies in Rwanda even though it is widely available. They will hold focus groups and in-depth interviews with couples, both separately and together, and health workers, to evaluate their knowledge and attitudes on the intrauterine devices, as well as evaluating current practices at two health clinics.

Rebecca Hope of Youth Development Labs Inc. in the U.S. will design a survey to investigate how young men from Mali, Nigeria, India and Kenya view family planning and identify the social factors such as family and social media that influence how they make related decisions. Despite the often dominant influence of men on family planning decisions, most intervention programs focus on the women. They will use methods including interviews and co-design workshops with the male participants to design a mobile phone survey consisting of multiple-choice and open-ended questions.

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.

Elena Bertozzi of Quinnipiac University and Aparna Sridhar from UCLA School of Medicine in the U.S. will design a game-like tool to identify cultural norms that influence future family planning decisions in adolescent school children in Karnataka, India, to help improve contraceptive education. The majority of these children have access to technologies such as the Internet and cell phones. They will exploit this by developing a game where users create their ideal virtual family by selecting the numbers and spacing of the children, and the age they would like to have their first child.

Rebecca Thornton of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in the U.S. will test whether access to home pregnancy tests and thereby earlier confirmation of pregnancy status in rural areas of sub-Saharan countries encourages family planning. Currently, 25% of married women in sub-Saharan Africa who do not want more children are not using contraception. This is due in part to the high cost, and that when women know they are not pregnant they are more likely to use contraception than when they are unsure.

Elmar Stroomer of Design without Borders Uganda Ltd. in Uganda will develop an interactive game combining methods from game-based learning to collect data on decisions made around family planning in Uganda. These data can then be used to develop strategies that encourage effective family planning for individuals and communities. They will recruit participants to co-create the game to simulate real-life situations using a human-centered design process.

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.

Jennifer Brown of the University of Cincinnati in the U.S. will apply cultural consensus modeling (CCM) to identify cultural factors that affect contraceptive practices among South African adolescent girls aged between 14 and 17. This demographic currently has one of the highest rates of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). However, there is limited empirical data on the underlying reasons, particularly related to the use of so-called dual contraceptives, which protect against both pregnancy and STIs.

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.

Paul Fleming of the University of Michigan School of Public Health along with Jay Silverman and Holly Shakya at the University of California, San Diego Center for Gender Equity and Health in the U.S. will learn about the social networks of husbands of adolescent girls in Niger, and how these networks influence decisions to use of family planning. The study will be conducted in collaboration with Pathfinder International, building on their Reaching Married Adolescents program.