Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) is a Canadian organization founded in 2010 with the dedication to supporting “bold idea with big impact” in global health. GCC especially cares about the impact of scaling up projects into the national programs of each country. The “big impact” is the changes to enhance child survival and improve quality of life of human, especially of women and children.
GCC also focuses on supporting ideas to apply information technology in initial health care system and to improve early risk detection in health care. Currently, GCC are focusing on programs: Saving lives at birth, Saving brains, and Global mental health. So far, thousands of project proposals have been sent and GCC has selected 65 initiatives in maternal and child care all over the world, in which RTCCD won 2 projects, namely:
– “Women with positive approach in mental health care” in the program Global mental health
– “Learning clubs for early development of children in Vietnamese villages” in the program Saving Brains
In Feb 2014, 2 experts of RTCCD were invited to join the Peer review committee for Saving Brains program. This program focuses on research initiatives in nurture and protects early brain development in the first 1000 days of life for the fulfilment of human capital potential. In Feb and March 2013, the two experts has completed to review 29 projects and attended the peer review meeting in Toronto (Canada) on 3rd and 4th April 2014.
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With the reputation in the cooperation activities, GCC nominated Prof. Doc. Tran Tuan to become a member of the selection committee for Scaling up the Saving lives at Birth program, which is the cooperation between GCC, USAID, DFID, The Government of Norway, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim of the program is to save the lives of pregnant women and newborns in poor communities around the time of childbirth. In April and May 2014, Prof Tran Tuan has completed to evaluate 17 proposals and shared the results in the peer review committee in Washington DC on 15th May 2014 in order to choose the finalist projects.
Although GCC Foundation is a new foundation for development support, it has scientific approach and aims to change the health care quality all over the world. All information about GCC supporting programs can be found via website: http://www.grandchallenges.ca [2]