Assiut University

Assiut University was established in 1957 as the first university in the south of Egypt and is now the fourth largest in the country. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology is part of the university's Faculty of Medicine comprising 75 faculty staff members and 50 residents and fellows. The affiliated 350 bed Assiut University Women’s Health Hospital was established in 2006 and serves both as a center for faculty members' clinical practices and as an educational environment for trainees. The hospital is actually a medical center that also serves more than 3000 outpatients annually and will serve as the source of patients with heavy menstrual bleeding and leiomyomas required for the nested studies in the aim and DatAUB projects . With more than 250 international publications per year, Assiut University's Faculty of Medicine, its departments and affiliated hospitals, has demonstrated that it has both the infrastructure and human resources necessary to conduct high quality research.

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 (The Fédération Internationale de Gynécologie et d'Obstétrique) is an 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. FIGO has a substantial investment in Africa supporting research and programs in a number of African countries.

The Brother Andre Medical Center (BAMC) is a privately funded Mission Hospital under the 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.