Start Center - Strategic Analysis, Research & Training Center

The START Center Global Program was launched in 2011 with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Initially, the Program was designed to support research and analysis for program teams at the Gates Foundation. Since that time, The START Center Global Program has expanded and now provides high-quality research and analytic support for a number of additional clients.

 

The START Center Team

Global Program Featured Projects

6/13/2025

Family Planning AI Chatbot Benchmarking

The START team derived a feasible evaluation method of a large language model (generative AI-powered) chatbot designed to improve access to family planning information among young adults in Kenya and Senegal. This project involved benchmarking the chatbot against global and culturally sensitive best practices for digital health tools in addition to establishing rapid-cycle methodological processes for ongoing refinement and implementation. Through key informant interviews and landscape analysis, the team provided recommendations on how to effectively ensure the chatbot’s accuracy, acceptability, safety, and potential for scale-up across diverse implementation contexts.

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4/17/2018

Fecal Sludge Sensors

The START Center conducted a landscape analysis for the Water, Hygiene, and Sanitation team on available technologies to track trucks, quantify volumes of fecal sludge, and quantify solid composition of fecal sludge using peer reviewed literature, gray literature, product catalogs, and key informant interviews.

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6/30/2024

Menstrual Health Product Use Literature Review

The Women's Health Innovation team at the Gates Foundation enlisted the START Center to conduct a literature review to understand the effect of menstrual health product use on infectious outcomes (sexually transmitted infections, urogenital infections, & bacterial vaginosis), and identify corresponding gaps in the literature.

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Additional Global Projects