The Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health has been awarded two grants totaling $71.3 million.
The institute, situated within the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, received the awards to expand the reach of The Challenge Initiative (TCI).
TCI is a global platform that empowers local governments to support the reproductive health needs of women and girls in poor communities in Africa and Asia.
The program helps women gain access to contraception and family planning services.
Over the last five years, TCI has supported city governments in eleven countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Philippines, and Uganda.
The program currently includes 111 countries worldwide.
The funding – $35 million from the Gates Foundation and $36.3 million from Bayer AG – will cover a four-year period ending in December 2025.
It will enable TCI to scale up its program to include another 60 cities.
“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,” said Jose Rimon II, director of the Gates Institute, in a statement.
Cities self-select to participate in TCI and must provide their own financial and human resources. TCI works within existing government and community-led systems, strengthening the local government’s ability to provide reproductive health services.
In exchange for joining the program, cities receive access to TCI University, an online learning platform. They also gain access to TCI’s Challenge Fund.
“Family planning impacts a number of public health challenges—from maternal and child mortality to gender equality,” said Ellen J. MacKenzie, dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Effective family planning programs delivered at scale can improve not only the health of the urban community, but also the world at large,” she said.
