Funding Opportunity

$250,000 grants available from the OPTions Initiative

The Options for Pregnancy Termination Innovation (OPTions) Initiative supports Bold Ideas with Big Impact® that put women and girls in control of where, when, and how they terminate their pregnancy. $250,000 CAD grants are available for innovators in any field to test novel methods of pregnancy termination at any stage of development.

The Challenge

The aim of the OPTions Hackathon is to save and improve the lives of women and girls through expanded and improved choices for methods of pregnancy termination.

The OPTions Initiative is seeking bold, innovative, transformational and ‘outside-the-box’ ideas for next-generation methods of pregnancy termination, including those that incorporate concepts, methods and technologies not currently being used for pregnancy termination.

Participants without ideas, but interest to develop and take forward an idea, can also participate.

Ideas

Next-generation methods of pregnancy termination should offer one or more improvements to existing pregnancy termination methods, including but not limited to:

  • The ability to be effectively administered at later stages in gestation
  • Effectiveness at terminating a pregnancy
  • The ability for women and girls to access and self-administer with greater autonomy and privacy
  • Ease of compliance (e.g. single pill administration)
  • Reduced side effects and pain
  • Stability profile
  • Permissive within existing regulatory frameworks (e.g. having other primary indications)
  • Cost-effectiveness

Participants

Innovators worldwide and in all fields are encouraged to participate, including but not limited to:

  • FemTech
  • Medicine
  • Healthcare
  • Biomedical engineering
  • Biotechnology
  • Biomedical physics
  • Drug development and trials
  • Biohacking
  • Individuals with knowledge of traditional, folk, and indigenous methods of pregnancy termination

If you have an existing project, the hackathon will prepare you for the grant request.

If you do not have an existing project, our experts will help you develop one before and during the hackathon.

Innovators must be directly affiliated with an institution that is able to administer a grant (sole proprietorships are ineligible) and cannot be a previous or current direct grantees of the Very Large Anonymous Donor. For more details on eligibility, please see Section 4.1 of the OPTions Round 2 Request for Proposal.

Judging Criteria

Applications will be evaluated on:

  • Boldness
  • The potential for impact
  • Project execution plan
  • Ability to champion change
  • Value for effort

Additional details can be found in Section 4.5 of the Request for Proposals.

Source: https://optionsinitiative.org/hackathon/

Share Button

Leave a Reply