Knowledge Generation

Rohini Pande of Harvard University in the U.S. will conduct two large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which will investigate whether female-friendly modifications to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGS) program in India can improve program efficiency and increase rural women's employment, financial inclusion, and empowerment. They will also test the efficacy of transparency tools to document wage payment delays to understanding whether holding local implementers accountable can decrease payment delays to women.

Flora Myamba of Repoa Ltd. in Tanzania will evaluate different methods for motivating women to use mobile financial services by performing a randomized control trial in Tanzania. Access to mobile money platforms in developing countries can help alleviate poverty, but many people, particularly women, do not own a mobile phone, and if they do, it is unclear whether they will use it for financial purposes.

Jonathan Jackson of Dimagi in the U.S., together with James Faghmous from the Arnhold Institute for Global Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will develop an open platform that combines real-time data on health, climate, and the environment at high resolution, and near real-time satellite data to inform on population density, in order to detect areas containing limited information (cold-spots) on malaria so that control programs can better allocate resources.

Emmanuel Roux of the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development in France will develop a method to standardize malaria datasets from different countries so that they can be used to monitor the disease across borders, which is crucial for elimination. They will co-design domain ontologies with relevant experts to bridge heterogeneities and standardize metadata across existing national surveillance databases, and use generic tools to extract data on individual disease incidence in cross-border areas to build a cross-border database.

Matt Berg of Ona Systems Inc. in the U.S. will develop a map widget that enables data collected by different platforms on different aspects of malaria, such as disease incidence and intervention efforts, to be accurately mapped and therefore more effectively integrated to help eliminate malaria. It is currently difficult to map specific events particularly in rural areas of developing countries, which lack formal addresses. Different groups use different naming schemes when recording disease-relevant data, making them difficult to cross-reference.

Hope Neighbor of Camber Collective in the U.S. will use applied behavioral research to better understand how and why young, sexually active women who are approaching marriage in West Africa make decisions on family planning products. Women appear to regulate their fertility differently based on their specific situation and needs. Young women who are not yet married tend to use unsafe or ineffective practices such as herbal remedies and abortion.

Takudzwa Sayi of the University of South Florida in the U.S. will use journey mapping to discover women's experiences and responses to hormonal contraceptives, as well as their interaction with providers, in Zimbabwe to help design new contraceptives. They will also hold focus group discussions with family planning providers to find out their views on the uptake of specific methods. They will enroll women and providers in rural and urban areas across Zimbabwe.

Alison Drake of the University of Washington Foundation, Global WACh in the U.S. will conduct an automated SMS-based survey to gather the opinions of women and adolescents on family planning methods in Kenya in order to characterize contraceptive use, reasons for discontinuation, and experience with side effects over a 6-month period that can help develop more acceptable methods. Current surveys capture only a single impression, whereas experiences can change over time. Using a mobile platform requires minimal personnel, and participants can register their opinions remotely.

Nick Ruktanonchai of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom will develop a web-based application to integrate currently disparate data on malaria disease risk, seasonal population dynamics, and past interventions, to identify prioritized areas for elimination efforts. Control programs are currently provided these data independently, making it difficult to know at a given time where elimination efforts would have the highest impact. They will develop the application together with a national malaria elimination program in one country in southern Africa.