Women’s health continues to be under-represented and poorly measured in global health frameworks.
Now is the time to address this challenge. Current measurement frameworks, such as the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY), fail to capture the full complexity of women’s health outcomes, as they do not account for the multidimensional factors that shape health burdens and progress. These dominant metrics often overlook gendered conditions and social determinants of health, limiting the ability to generate actionable insights. Harmful norms and gender-related discrimination often contribute to poorer health outcomes in women, yet they remain inadequately reflected in existing indicators. Without alternative approaches that incorporate gender-sensitive and multidimensional factors, policies and interventions risk being misaligned with the real needs of women globally. This gap leaves critical gender-related conditions and non-health interventions unmeasured, further hindering progress in advancing women’s health.
This Grand Challenge aims to bridge this gap by fostering innovative modeling approaches that rethink how women’s health is measured, using available data, or easily obtainable, in new ways to provide a more holistic and actionable understanding of health outcomes. Advances in data science, modeling techniques, technological development, and gender-sensitive approaches present a unique opportunity to innovate; especially when global systems are facing unprecedented shifts that could further increase gaps in equity. This Grand Challenge builds on the Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map 2023, developed collaboratively by over 250 global stakeholders across 50 countries through the Innovation Equity Forum (IEF). The Opportunity Map identified key gaps and priorities in women’s health, emphasizing the need for innovation across multiple areas, including data and modeling, health and economic impact, supply and access to services, and skills, knowledge, and networks. The Opportunity Map serves as a roadmap for transformative solutions that address systemic barriers and advance gender-equitable health outcomes for women.
This Grand Challenge on Innovative Data and Modeling Approaches to Measure Women’s Health seeks to advance innovative ways to measure women’s health by either developing new measurement models or adapting existing ones to better capture the full scope of women’s health burdens and progress. This Grand Challenge prioritizes solutions that leverage data sources that are existing or under development rather than relying on new, large-scale data collection efforts, ensuring sustainability and feasibility.
Funding Level
We will consider proposals for awards of up to $150,000 USD for each project, with a grant term of 18-24 months. Application budgets should be commensurate with the scope of work proposed. Indirect costs will be considered and should be included in the budget for the up to $150,000 USD award (subject to the Gates Foundation’s indirect cost policy).
Eligibility Criteria
This initiative is open to nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies and academic institutions. We particularly encourage applications involving projects led by women, early-career researchers and practitioners seeking to innovate in women’s health measurement, or from women-led organizations and applications from institutions based in low- and middle-income countries. We also encourage collaborative submissions across disciplines such as economics, public health, and gender studies.
We are looking for proposals that:
- Demonstrate innovative thinking in modeling women’s health, providing creative methodologies or tools to address gaps in measurement.
- Leverage existing data sources and/or explore datasets that are feasible to collect within current capacities.
- Incorporate intersectional approaches, addressing disparities (social, economic, and structural determinants of health) that disproportionately impact women.
- Align with the Opportunity Map dimensions, focusing on multidimensional indicators beyond traditional composite measures.
- Show potential to generate actionable insights for policy and programmatic interventions at a national and/or global scale.
- Enable cross-country or subnational comparisons, offering solutions that reveal context-specific gaps and opportunities for progress.
- Present a clear pathway for real-world impact, outlining how the outputs can inform resource allocation, policy, or program design.
- Highlight the potential for scalability and adaptability of the proposed approach across diverse country contexts.
- Promote interdisciplinary collaboration, combining perspectives from multiple sectors such as public health, data science, economics, and gender studies.
- For more information and to apply before March 24, go to: https://submit.gatesfoundation.org/prog/innovative_data_and_modeling_approaches_to_measure_womens_health/