The Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has announced grants totaling $71.3 million in support of sexual and reproductive health interventions in Africa and Asia.

The grants of $36.3 million from Bayer AG and $35 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over four years will expand the reach of The Challenge Initiative (TCI), a global platform that supports the sexual and reproductive health needs of women and girls living in poor urban communities. Over the last five years, TCI has worked to sustainably scale proven high-impact family planning interventions in eleven countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, India, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Philippines, and Uganda. The new funding will enable the initiative to continue supporting a hundred and eleven city governments in improving access to contraception and family planning services and to reach up to another sixty cities worldwide.

Participating city governments make a commitment to the health of their communities by bringing their own financial and human resources to the table and leading program implementation, in return for access to TCI’s Challenge Fund and technical expertise through coaching and training.

“Family planning impacts a number of public health challenges — from maternal and child mortality to gender equality,” said Bloomberg School of Public Health dean Ellen J. MacKenzie. “Effective family planning programs delivered at scale can improve not only the health of the urban community, but also the world at large.”

“We are so grateful for this new investment from Bayer and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue the groundbreaking work The Challenge Initiative began back in 2016,” said Jose Rimon II, director of the Gates Institute and senior scientist in Johns Hopkins’ Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. “With this new funding, The Challenge Initiative can focus not only on supporting local governments to rapidly scale up proven, high-impact interventions but also on ensuring impact at the health systems level and on contraceptive uptake — in a more cost-efficient and sustainable manner.”

(Photo credit: Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition via Unsplash)