Publications

In December 2018, the Cameroon Ministry of Public Health, Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF), Grand Challenges Canada, Nutrition International and the Fondation Kangourou Cameroun, with the support of the Fundación Canguro Colombia, launched the Cameroon Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) Development Impact Bond (DIB).

Program delivery started in February 2019 with the DIB aiming to reduce morbidity and mortality among premature and low-birth weight infants in five regions of Cameroon by rolling-out quality KMC in 10 hospitals. DIB design, performance management and sustainability support were provided by Social Finance.

As the DIB comes to a close, after two and a half years of service delivery, this report provides an overview of what the initiative achieved, the lessons we learnt and what might come next.

• Cameroon KMC Development Impact Bond Report — EN (pdf, 9.53 MB)

With support from the Government of Canada, Grand Challenges Canada and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) launched a funding call on the impacts of climate change and health in October 2022. We sought promising new innovations to address some of the major health challenges in low-and middle-income countries.

The response was extraordinary. We received 772 applications from 80 countries, with 75% of applications based in Africa. The innovations spanned a variety of climate challenges, and the solutions they proposed addressed a wide variety of health impacts.

This report, released at COP28 in Dubai, outlines some of the key lessons from the funding call and indicates possible areas for funders and partners to consider as they conduct their own work at the intersection of climate change and health.

• Emerging innovations at the intersection of climate change and health: Results from a global call for proposals - Read the insights from our global funding call on the impact of climate change and health. (pdf, 11.59 MB)

This learning brief provides an overview of Grand Challenges Canada’s key learnings in scaling, sustaining, and measuring the impact of digital health innovations. Featuring organizations that are at the forefront of creating and testing new, versatile digital health approaches, this brief also includes reflections on the role of digital health tools in addressing compounding factors that affect access to digital health resources in low- and middle-income countries, including gender inequalities and the digital divide. Finally, the emergence of COVID-19 as a global crisis offers an important opportunity to reflect on the role of digital health innovations in addressing health needs, especially for women and children.

• Digital Health Learning Brief

This knowledge brief provides a review of how a group of Grand Challenges Canada funded ventures experienced the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic, their responses to adapt to the challenges and opportunities, and recommendations on how funders can incentivize ventures – especially those at risk – to invest in building their own resilience to future shocks and stresses.

• Lessons from COVID-19 – The Resilience of Innovative Sanitation & Hygiene Ventures (pdf, 1.38 MB)

The Grand Challenges approach identifies critical barriers holding back progress in addressing critical problems, develops targeted programs to fund teams to develop solutions to overcome these barriers and implements strategies to help to bring these solutions to scale in order to address the pressing challenges of the world’s most impoverished nations and communities.

• The Grand Challenges Approach (pdf, 485.66 KB)
• Aligning Investments for Development Innovation: Challenges, Prizes and Bonds (pdf, 444.53 KB)

Integrated Innovation® is the coordinated application of scientific/technological, social and business innovation to develop solutions to complex challenges. This approach does not discount the singular benefits of each of these types of innovation alone, but rather highlights the powerful synergies that can be realized by aligning all three. Integrated Innovation recognizes that scientific/technological innovations have a greater chance of going to scale to achieve global impact and sustainability if they are developed from the outset in conjunction with appropriate social and business innovations.

• Integrated Innovation (pdf, 226.52 KB)
• Integrated Innovation: An Update and Early Lessons (pdf, 72.70 KB)

Grand Challenges Canada is committed to supporting gender equality, and is proud to partner with the Government of Canada in bringing its Feminist International Assistance Policy to life. Canada’s ongoing global leadership on gender equality will help drive progress toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal Five: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

• Implementing Grand Challenges Canada’s Gender Strategy (pdf, 435.31 KB)