Knowledge Generation

HOPE is a model for cervical cancer screening, recruiting women from the community (HOPE Ladies) to promote knowledge about cervical cancer and self-collection of samples. Testing will be for free in the public sector (low income women), and for high income women we will use marketing strategies and new channels of distribution for the test which will be performed for a fee.

52% of girls in South Sudan are married before age 18; 17% marry before they turn 15 (UN). Child brides have double the pregnancy death rate of their peers. Pregnancy leads in cause of death for girls ages 15-19 in LMICs. Child brides are at high risk for fistulas vaginal and anal ruptures, and their babies are sicker and weaker. Child brides have a higher risk for STDs and chronic anemia, lack access to contraceptives, have a higher risk of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and murder.

Le problème abordé par le projet est de garantir le droit à un avortement gratuit et légal pour les filles, les adolescents et les femmes autochtones Chiquitano et autres de la ville de Pailón qui sont victimes de violences sexuelles.Plusieurs femmes de Pailón ont été victimes de traitements cruels et de violations de leurs droits car elles sont criminalisées, exposées aux médias, et agressées dans les hôpitaux quand elles présentent une grossesse à la suite de violences sexuelles.

We plan to offer pregnant teenagers social support, nutritional information and advise on contraception using mobile technology. We believe this is both affordable and sustainable in Low and middle income settings. A positive experience of such an intervention can then be rolled out to cover other settings since teenage pregnancy is a worldwide phenomenon. The outcomes of interest will be both physical parameters like the anthropometric measurements as well as cognitive development.The intervention will be tested in Homa Bay County, Western Kenya.

Gender-based violence is unreported or under-reported in many rural parts of the Philippines, coinciding with regions where last mile access to support services for victims is also limited. A major contributor to this problem is the fact that victims have no way and no choice to report incidents or seek help. As a result, authorities and policy makers lack the data to intervene in gender-based violence or improve the services and programs to support victims.

WHO reports that 10% of women experience mental distress during pregnancy, with the prevalence of antenatal depression reported as 7.4% in the first, 12.8% in the second and 12% in the third trimester. Individuals in low- to middle income countries are deemed to be at a greater risk with 20-40% of the women in the developing world being affected by maternal depression.

Alexander Aiken of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom will use the Matched Parallel Cohort (MPC) method in a multi-site study to measure the impact of antibiotic-resistant infections on mortality in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. More complete data on antimicrobial resistance for this population is greatly needed, even though preliminary data suggests that mortality rates are likely higher than for high-income countries.

Melkamu Berhane of Jimma University in Ethiopia will translate current knowledge to develop appropriate therapeutic foods for the management of persistent diarrhea in children from locally available ingredients to improve, through the subsequent adoption and scale-up of the intervention, and to lead to policy recommendations.

Drew Arenth, Benjamin Fels, and Suvrit Sra of Macro-Eyes in the U.S. are applying a statistical machine learning approach to the immunization supply chains of health facilities in Tanzania that accurately and continuously predicts demand to ensure the right vaccines and levels are being stocked. Currently, vaccine supply is largely fixed or driven by depleted stocks. This leaves children unable to be vaccinated due to stock outs at clinics, as well as often high levels of waste, which could both be overcome by better forecasting vaccination needs for individual clinics.

James Berkley and Abdi Abdirahman of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom will test whether metagenomic analysis of clinical samples from patients with suspected infectious diseases can better identify the causative pathogens than current diagnostic methods, to help improve treatment. In Africa and Asia, many severely malnourished infants die after being discharged from a hospital likely due to infectious disease syndromes such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and sepsis.