Grand Challenges Brazil seeks innovation in preventing, managing preterm birth

Writing in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Steven Buchsbaum, Gary Darmstadt, and Rachel Lenington of the foundation state, "Announced this week, the Brazilian Ministry of Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have launched a call for proposals to promote innovation in health research to tackle some of the biggest challenges of maternal and child health." They continue, "Initially, Grand Challenges Brazil will fund research that seeks the best, innovative ideas to better understand the reasons for preterm birth, to develop new and more effective interventions to prevent and manage these early births, and to scale up solutions for impact in averting deaths and disability from prematurity." They conclude, "Innovations developed in Brazil likely won't stay in Brazil; with foresight and planning, innovations can spread through networks and have impact far beyond Brazilian shores" (2/27).