FCRA PROJECT: SEED GRANTS AND TRANSITION-TO-SCALE GRANTS FOR ITS GLOBAL MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM.

Grand Challenges Canada: Seed Grants and Transition-to-Scale Grants for its Global Mental Health Program

Deadline: 09 January 2014

The Grand Challenges Canada has announced a Request for Proposals to provide two types of funding: seed grants and transition-to-scale grants under its Global Mental Health initiative.

Grand Challenges Canada seeks bold ideas with real-world impact to improve treatments and expand access to care for mental disorders that have the potential to be sustainable at scale. These ideas should be innovative, transformational, affordable, and cost-effective to address the large treatment gap for accessible, evidence-based, high-quality mental health care.

Specifically, to improve treatments and expand access to care, applicants must propose innovative solutions to one (or more) of the following specific challenges identified from the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health initiative within this priority area:

# Integrate screening and core packages of services into routine primary health care

# Reduce the cost and improve the supply of effective medications

# Provide effective and affordable community-based care and rehabilitation

# Improve children’s access to evidence-based care by trained health providers

# Develop effective treatments for use by non-specialists, including lay health workers with minimal training

# Incorporate functional impairment and disability into assessment

# Develop mobile and IT technologies (such as telemedicine) to increase access to evidence-based care

Seed grants support the development and validation of innovative ideas to improve treatments and expand access to care for mental disorders, offering up to $250,000 CAD each over a maximum of two (2) years.

Transition-to-scale grants support the refinement, testing, and implementation of innovative solutions that have already achieved proof of concept to bring them toward scale, offering up to $1 million CAD in matched funding over a maximum of three (3) years.

Grand Challenges Canada’s ultimate goal is to save and improve lives in low- and middle-income countries. As a result, funded projects are expected to demonstrate real-world impact on health outcomes in the developing world.