START CENTER COMPLETES 17 RESEARCH ASKS IN 2018-2019 ACADEMIC YEAR

In the 2018-2019 academic year, START Center’s 14 Research Assistants and 3 Global Innovation Fellows completed 17 projects. Twelve of these projects were completed under the direction of teams at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The other three projects were in partnership with teams at Boston Scientific, Children’s HeartLink, and Global to Local. Below, you may read brief details about each of these 17 projects. Click through to learn additional information and view the final deliverables for many of the projects.

• Vaccine Delivery Research Digest: This ongoing project was launched in 2014 to support the Vaccine Access and Delivery team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This monthly literature review summarizes new publications in peer-reviewed literature that inform the field of vaccine access and delivery in low-resource settings. The START team conducts a comprehensive monthly search to identify new research manuscripts published in academic journals and catalogued via online databases, and reviews the literature to identify articles of relevance to the field of vaccine access and delivery. The digest has become a valued source for academic partners and the scientific community, funders, international NGO members, programmatic and policy leaders, and national and local stakeholders globally.
• IDA Triple Therapy Implementation: The START Center reviewed preliminary resources to create a research plan that could be used to determine the factors influencing the implementation of ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine citrate, and albendazole (IDA) triple therapy for lymphatic filariasis (LF) in select countries.
• Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Profiles for Nigerian States: The START team performed data extraction and calculation of Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) indicators from Nigerian national health surveys and conducted a literature review on demand and utilization of MNCH services as they relate to vulnerabilities, social constraints, and differences in the public and private health sectors.
• Risk Group Heterogeneity across 90-90-90: The START team conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles and grey literature on the demographic and risk-behavior groups associated with each of the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals: awareness of HIV status, enrollment on HIV treatment, and achievement of viral suppression.
• Country Immunization Activities Summary, Phase 2: The START Center conducted a review of country-specific Gavi documents for the Vaccine Delivery team in order to assess the challenges, successes, and current focus for immunization activities in a variety of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and to identify and evaluate patterns across health system domains as well as between country categories as defined by the Foundation.
• Integrated Portfolio Management (IPM) Cost of Illness (COI): The IPM COI work encompassed an initial internal BMGF survey on data needs around costs of treating illness for diseases addressed in the BMGF Research & Development portfolio, followed by a full data collection process for COI input data and synthesis into data input sheets used in IPM analyses.
• Validating the Fogg Behavior Model in Nigeria: The START Center conducted an analysis using components of the Fogg Behavior Model as a framework to assess motivation and ability to use contraceptives among young women with differing perceptions of social norms surrounding contraceptive use in Nigeria.
• HPV Immunogenicity Data Review: The START team performed a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to evaluate the immunogenicity of alternative dosing schedules for the HPV vaccine.
• Senegal Fact Base: The START team conducted an in-depth analysis of the current social, political, and economic situation in Senegal, developing recommendations for the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene, Family Planning, Gender Equality, Malaria, Universal Healthcare Coverage, and Agriculture focus areas.
• African Networks: The START team performed an analysis of leadership, consumer, sector-specific and professional networks, identifying 63 specific networks that are active in sub-Saharan Africa, two of which were recommended for potential engagement.
• Country Immunizations Activity Summary, Phase 3: The START team updated the Country Immunizations Code book from phase 2 to include EPI documents that the BMGF Vaccine Delivery team obtained from countries. In the second phase of the project, we aimed to provide insight on a series of hypotheses from BMGF on why certain countries experienced better or worse vaccine coverage, using data from the codebook.
• Family Planning Training in Crisis Settings: The START team reviewed published and grey literature and consulted field experts in family planning, emergency response, and mobile health to evaluate the current landscape of training for family planning in crisis settings and to identify opportunities for growth and improvement.
• Birth Asphyxia Burden Assessment and Landscaping: The START team performed a targeted literature search to assess current interventions for neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), specifically those that show promise in LMICs.
• Birthing Suite of the Future: The START team researched birthing suites and practices in Sweden, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They produced a case report for each country that allowed readers to compare and contrast the processes in each of the three countries.
• Boston Scientific: Boston Scientific is a medical device manufacturer. START performed data analysis around Venus Leg Ulcers.
• Centers of Excellence: The START Center team responded to a project request from Children’s HeartLink (CHL), an organization that supports capacity-building of pediatric surgical care in LMICs, to conduct a rapid assessment of CHL’s current model and to develop recommendations to support scaling.
• Global to Local BRIDGES: Global to Local (G2L) develops programs and interventions to improve health, lower the cost of care, and empower under served communities across the country. The START team reviewed published and grey literature, and consulted field experts to identify global health programs, experts, and organizations that could offer key learnings for communities in rural Washington.

START is currently working on seven projects in the summer months, with several more to launch in the fall.