Maternal, Newborn, and Adolescent Health

Marion Sumari-de Boer and Kennedy Ngowi from Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute in the United Republic of Tanzania and Rosalijn Both from Segel Research and Training Consulting in Ethiopia will use mobile phones to learn about the contraceptive needs and behaviors of young unmarried men in Ethiopia and Tanzania in order to promote the use of contraception. This group is mostly overlooked in studies aiming to improve contraceptive and family planning practices, even though their behavior is directly relevant.

Jane Harries of the University of Cape Town in South Africa will take a multisensory approach to increase the use of contraception, particularly over the long term, across South Africa. By exploring how different contraceptives are perceived via multiple senses, not only visual perceptions but also how they feel, and how their use impacts the daily life of the woman, and her wider network, they hope to identify new barriers that influence uptake.

Paul Crits-Christoph and Chelsea Morroni of the University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. will develop a mobile phone application that enables women to identify the method of contraception best suited to their needs to help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in Botswana, which is currently estimated at 44%. Although around 61% of women are reported to not want any more children, the most commonly used contraceptives are single use, such as condoms, despite the availability of longer-term measures like intrauterine devices.

Martin Matzuk, along with Nicholas Simmons of Baylor College of Medicine in the U.S. and Masahito Ikawa of Osaka University in Japan, will build a male contraceptive drug discovery platform comprising a library of two billion small compounds generated by DNA-Encoded Chemistry Technology (DEC-Tec) at relatively low cost, and a panel of male-specific fertility proteins. Contraception options for men are currently limited to condoms or vasectomy. A safe, low-cost small molecule contraceptive similar to the female "pill", could also help men to better control family planning.

Jianjun Sun of the University of Connecticut in the U.S. is developing non-hormonal contraceptives using a fly-based ovulation assay to identify compounds that specifically block the rupture of follicles, which is required to release eggs for fertilization also in mammals. The popular female contraceptive "pill" alters the hormonal cycle and is widely used throughout the Western world. However, it can have undesirable side effects.

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.

Alison Norris of Ohio State University in the U.S. will perform a prospective study to assess how individuals' contraceptive needs and identified barriers explain contraceptive use over time for developing a simple tool to prevent unintended pregnancies in Malawi. In collaboration with a Malawi NGO, they will access their cohort of one thousand reproductive age women and their partners in rural Malawi. Study team members will visit each participant in their home four times over eight months to assess factors related to contraceptive need such as pregnancy desire, and perceived fecundity.

Jennifer Griffin of RTI International in the U.S. will test whether the gestational age of infants born prematurely can be determined by combining simple physical measurements with an automated analysis of the blood vessels in the retina using the camera on a mobile phone. As the fetus develops in the womb, blood vessels in the anterior lens gradually disappear, which closely correlates with gestational age at delivery.

Sean Deoni of Brown University in the U.S. will evaluate whether mapping myelination in the infant brain can predict their subsequent levels of cognitive ability such as language and motor functioning, which emerge later in childhood. Myelin is a lipid that is deposited around neuronal axons during development. Twenty-four infants between four and six months old will be recruited to a controlled pilot study.

Chetan Patil of Temple University in the U.S. is adapting camera mobile phones for the simple and low cost measurement of bilirubin levels to identify jaundice in newborns by photographing the skin. Jaundice is a common disorder in newborns and can often be easily treated with sunlight. In developed countries, bilirubin measurements are standard-of-care, but in low resource settings, detection can be prohibitively expensive. If jaundice is not treated, it can lead to long-term disabilities.