The Options for Pregnancy Termination Innovation
Initiative (“OPTions Initiative”) is Grand Challenges Canada’s investment
program for safe pregnancy termination innovations.
The goal of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to support
women’s, girls’, and people with diverse sexual and gender identities’ access
to safe abortion in low- and middleincome countries. They seek innovative and
transformative approaches that put women, girls, and people with diverse sexual
and gender identities in control of where, when, and how they terminate their
pregnancy.
The focus of this call is to support the
development and testing of:
- new or improved approaches to
increasing early access to existing abortion products and services, and
- next generation methods of
pregnancy termination, menses induction or conception interruption.
Grand Challenges Canada seeks bold ideas
designed to be implemented in low- and middle-income originating from academic,
nonprofit organizations, or for-profit entities, as well as other recognized
institutions. The following types of institutions are particularly encouraged
to apply:
- Community based organizations
and movements
- New and/or unusual entrants to
the sexual and reproductive health and rights space that add value and
bring new perspectives to the practice of safe abortion
- Institutions that are
positioned to introduce novel ways of addressing the problem
- Academic or research
institutions (for next generation applicants)
- Youth, woman and/or LGBTQI+-led
or serving organizations
- Feminist organizations
- Social enterprises and/or
models demonstrating early potential for financial sustainability
Focus Areas
Proposed innovations must be bold, innovative,
transformational and ‘outside-thebox’, and must have the potential to represent
a significant improvement over current access to or methods of safe abortion in
either of the following two focus areas:
- Access: Introducing or increasing early access to manual
vacuum aspiration (MVA) and/or medical abortion (MA). This includes but is
not limited to the following:
- Decentralizing and
de-medicalizing abortion care
- Reclassifying existing
abortion methods to fit within relevant regulatory frameworks
- Reframing and normalizing
abortion to combat stigma
- Increasing the number of
trained providers and available safe services
- Reducing economic barriers to
accessing safe abortion
- Improving access to
information that will help a girl, woman, or person with a diverse sexual
and gender identity to safely terminate a pregnancy
- Next Generation Methods: Introducing a next generation method of safe
abortion that provides one or more significant improvements over existing
methods, including:
- Equal or better effectiveness
at terminating pregnancy over existing methods
- Permissive within existing
regulatory frameworks (e.g., it has other primary indications)
- Ability for
self-administration with greater autonomy and privacy
- Cost effective relative to
current safe methods
- Ease of use/compliance (e.g.,
single pill administration)
- Reduced side effects and
pain
- The ability to be effectively
administered early or at later stages of gestation
Funding Information
- Seed Funding: Successful proposals will be awarded seed grants
of up to $250,000 CAD over 18 to 24 months to develop and test the
proposed innovation.
- Transition to Scale Funding: A limited number of innovations funded through
this RFP will be invited to apply for transition-to-scale funding of up to
$3,000,000 CAD, to support the refinement, testing and implementation for
scale of innovative solutions that have already achieved proof of concept.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible institutions include social enterprises
and other recognized institutions (e.g., non-profit organizations, academic
institutions, and for-profit companies) that:
- are formed and legally
incorporated in an eligible country, as determined by which focus area of
the Request for Proposals an institution is applying to
- can successfully execute the
activities in their respective technical area
- are capable of receiving and
administering grant funding
- are not sole proprietorships
(sole proprietorships include any business structure that places liability
on an individual or individuals, i.e. limited liability partnerships or
unincorporated trusts in certain jurisdictions, rather than an
incorporated business entity or organization).
- are not United Nations country
offices or multilateral organizations
Country eligibility depends on the type of
intervention proposed. For access interventions, applications must come from an
institution legally incorporated in a low- or middle-income country. For next
generation methods interventions, applications may come from any country,
including a high-income country. Applications from low- and middle-income
countries are particularly welcome.
Post Date - 16-Jun-2021