Gates Foundation’s Request for Proposal for Preventing Preterm Birth

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s new grant program for Grand Challenges in Global Health in partnership with the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), is seeking letters of inquiry for the new grant program Preventing Preterm Birth.

The grant program seeks to address the problem of the increasing number of newborans dying from preterm birth than from any other cause. Those newborns that survive often suffer disproportionately from other diseases and in this way, preventing preterm birth is part of a comprehensive approach to ensuring a healthy start to life.

By filling the void of scientific knowledge on the causes and mechanisms important to preterm birth in the developing world, this initiative could:

• Lead to low-cost novel technologies to reduce the global burden of prematurity
• Attract scientists to engage in this underserved global health field
• Increase investments from other global health research and development funders

The deadline to submit proposals is 31 January 2011. For more information and to apply to this opportunity, visit this link.