Estimating the Global Burden of Diarrheal Diseases
Supports teams producing country-level estimates of major diarrheal diseases to inform global health planning and child health priorities.
Eligibility · Global — open worldwide
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges initiative issued an RFP titled "Estimating the Global Burden of Diarrheal Diseases" to fund high-quality research generating country-specific disease burden estimates for 2025. The challenge is housed under the Grand Challenges platform and administered through the Foundation's grant portal at submit.gatesfoundation.org. Applications were due June 16, 2026 at 11:30 am PDT. The maximum award is $1.5 million per project, with a maximum duration of two years. The Foundation particularly welcomes LMIC-based institutions, partnerships led by LMIC institutions, and global consortia with meaningful LMIC partner engagement and capacity development.
Proposals must produce minimum country-specific estimates for 2025 across eight specified pathogens: rotavirus, Shigella, adenovirus 40/41, norovirus GII, ST-ETEC, cholera, Cryptosporidium, and Campylobacter. Required outputs include total diarrheal mortality in children under five, pathogen-attributed mortality, and morbidity burden where feasible — all with confidence intervals. Geographic preference is given to research covering India, Nigeria, and sub-Saharan Africa. Eligible applicants include research institutes, nonprofits, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions; individual applicants are not eligible.
Competitive proposals will combine methodological rigor in epidemiologic modeling and etiologic attribution with feasibility across multiple countries simultaneously. The Foundation expects clear data provenance, transparent confidence interval reporting, and an explicit plan for how estimates will inform child health prioritization decisions in LMICs. Teams without LMIC institutional leadership should document meaningful capacity development components. No matching funds are required. The application portal is https://submit.gatesfoundation.org/prog/estimating_the_global_burden_of_diarrheal_diseases.
Research generating minimum country-specific 2025 burden estimates for eight diarrheal pathogens — rotavirus, Shigella, adenovirus, norovirus, ST-ETEC, cholera, Cryptosporidium, and Campylobacter — with emphasis on under-five child mortality in LMICs.
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