Participating Organizations


While the Hub of AWARrD is in the University of Assiut in Egypt, the proposal is a collaborative endeavor involving faculty and consultants from a number of institutions in the US and Europe, an 80 year old international network of 132 national Obstetrical and Gynecological societies, a private health care system in Africa, and the company that has produced a menstrual "app" that has the largest user base in the world - over 120 million registered users.

University of Assiut

Assiut University is a research university established in 1957, was the first university and is the largest university in Upper Egypt.

University of Chicago 

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois that was founded in 1890. Current enrollment is over 16,000 students, including more than 6,ooo undergraduates and over 10,000 graduate students. Faculty or graduates have received 92 Nobel Prizes including 12 in Physiology or Medicine and 30 in Physics.

FIGO

FIGO is the international organization headquartered in London, the United Kingdom that comprises 132 world national obstetrical and gynecological societies and a spectrum of active professional committees.  The FIGO Menstrual Disorders Committee has both raised awareness of issues relating to heavy menstrual bleeding and developed classification systems designed to support worldwide education, clinical care, and the design and interpretation of basic, translational, clinical and epidemiological research.

Flo Health

Flo Health is a personal digital health company headquartered in the United Kingdom that uses a free menstrual application to interact with over 130 million women worldwide about menstruation, fertility, contraception and related issues. The application is available in more than 20 languages. Currently, over 3 million African users are registered and almost 2 million use the system on a monthly basis. Flow has developed a reputation for working with investigators at research universities in Australia and the United States for the performance of research regarding menstrual health and wellbeing.

Brother Andre Medical Center

The Brother Andre Medical Center (BAMC) is a, small, privately funded Mission Hospital underthe Trusteeship of the Congregation of Holy Cross (Notre Dame University) and located in Dandora, a low resource suburban community located on the Eastern perimeter of Nairobi

Kenya. The system comprises a hospital (the Medical Center) and related outpatient facilities

that supports a population of approximately 40,000 individuals of whom 24,000 are female and

17,000 are of reproductive age. The local estimated prevalence of anemia in early pregnancy is

about 20-34% depending on age. The BAMC currently is involved with a successful app-based

antenatal care delivery system that is part of the “Mom-Care” project managed by the

PharmAccess Foundation from Amsterdam, the Netherlands (PharmAccess.org). This

relationship has not only provided the BAMC and its clients/patients the experience needed to

develop experience and competence in the use of app-based outpatient care, but it has also

allowed for an estimation of the penetration of “smart-phones” in their catchment area. The

BAMC has determined that at least 15,000 of the 17,000 women of reproductive age – the

target population for the Val-IDA-te project, have smart phones capable of supporting the Flo

application. The BAMC has access to the experienced community educators necessary to

“prime” the women for use of the app, and has the clinical and laboratory facilities necessary to

support the project, understanding that there are a number of assays that may require

additional budget to allow them to provide all of the metrics necessary for the proposed

project. Perhaps more important is the commitment of the Board of the BAMC, comprising US,

European and African advisors, to participation in research designed to evaluate and improve

women’s reproductive health.


Share by: