Maternal & Infant Health Award
Launched on International Women’s Day 2022, the Maternal & Infant Health Award–sponsored by The Patchwork Collective, ICONIQ Impact, and Lever for Change–is a $10 million grant competition that will support innovative solutions to improve maternal and infant health outcomes across the globe, with a special focus on locally led, community-based programs and projects.
Finalists
On May 11, 2023, The Patchwork Collective, ICONIQ Impact, and Lever for Change announced five finalists for the Maternal & Infant Health Award. The Award received 220 applications from 49 countries, with each entry subject to peer-to-peer reviews and multiple rigorous evaluations by experts from multiple disciplines across the world. The finalists were selected based on four key criteria: whether they were community-led, impactful, feasible, and durable in their proposed approaches.
The Maternal & Infant Health Award was created to help community leaders—particularly those in low-resource communities—provide women with access to safe, equitable, and quality maternal healthcare.
Each of the five finalist projects was rigorously evaluated by peer organizations and issue-area experts advances and provides a unique method for addressing maternal and infant healthcare–whether that be through incorporating ancestral health practices into existing healthcare models or equipping midwives with an illustrated smartphone application to help detect high-risk pregnancies.
The finalists are now featured in our Bold Solutions Network, a growing global network of highly rated proposals from our challenges that are well-positioned to accelerate social change.
The five finalists' projects are listed below in alphabetical order (follow links to their Bold Solutions Network profile pages for more information):
- Delivering Safer Births: Connecting Indigenous Mothers, Midwives, Navigators, and Hospitals in Guatemala: Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq will adapt and scale their program to cover 10,000 births annually in five Guatemalan Provinces and five Mayan languages. Equipping midwives with an illustrated, checklist-based smartphone application will help detect high-risk complications and provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care for indigenous mothers requiring hospital services, ultimately reducing maternal mortality by 80%.
- Elevating Mothers’ Voices to Improve Pregnancy Outcomes in Kenya: Jacaranda Health partners with governments to deploy affordable and scalable solutions through government hospitals, where the majority of underserved mothers and babies receive care. Jacaranda’s low-cost, evidence-based approach combines: 1) a digital health platform, 2) a nurse mentorship program, and 3) a data infrastructure system that connects mothers, communities, and government partners. In the context of the Maternal & Infant Health Award, Jacaranda would scale its programs nationally in Kenya, impacting 60% of pregnancies there.
- Intercultural Healthcare for Mothers and Infants in Rural Colombia: SinergiasONG will work with local health institutions to improve maternal and child health services and their quality of life. Through a powerful alliance of health professionals, educators, community leaders, and social sciences professionals, SinergiasONG will strengthen intercultural health models that incorporate community and ancestral health practices of ethnic and rural populations.
- Scaling Community-led Health, Improving Maternal and Infant Outcomes in Kenya: Lwala Community Alliance, Dandelion Africa, and Village HopeCore International—all Kenyan-founded organizations—will scale their community-led health model in three rural Kenyan counties. Their work will unlock community leadership, professionalize community health workers, and strengthen health facilities, ultimately reducing maternal and infant mortality.
- Sustainably Improving Maternal and Newborn Health in Uganda: The Babies and Mothers Alive Foundation (BAMA) will scale its innovative NGO-Government partnership model to five districts serving a population of 1,115,540. BAMA will train 30 government-employed Mentor Midwives and 150 community health workers, and other reproductive and child health stakeholders to deliver quality care, advocate for improved government health services, and strengthen district health management through improved quality data collection and reporting in five districts in Uganda.
About the Award
The Maternal & Infant Health Award will support innovative solutions that are improving maternal and infant health outcomes across the globe, with a special focus on locally led, community-based programs and projects.
The Maternal & Infant Health Award is the third in a series of grant competitions managed by Lever for Change in collaboration with ICONIQ Impact–ICONIQ Capital’s platform for collaborative philanthropy. The Award follows the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award, a grant competition launched in 2020 to help secure a brighter, more durable future for refugees worldwide, and the Stronger Democracy Award, a grant competition launched in 2021 to help strengthen our democratic institutions, improve political representation, and increase participation in the United States democratic process.
More details about the Maternal & Infant Health Award can be found at maternalinfanthealthaward.org
