MCH faculty members to lead $4.5M grant for evaluation of family planning in Africa

January 11, 2016

Dr. Sian Curtis

Dr. Ilene Speizer

Two faculty members in maternal and child health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health will lead a project funded by a three-year, $4.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sian Curtis, PhD, research associate professor, will serve as principal investigator, and Ilene Speizer, PhD, research professor, will serve as co-investigator and senior adviser. They will conduct process evaluation research related to the Gates Foundation’s family planning portfolios in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina Population Center will administer the grant.

“This is an exciting opportunity to further our knowledge of how to improve access, quality and utilization of family planning services in these countries to inform program implementation,” Curtis said. “The project also will help us to develop rigorous but pragmatic approaches to evaluate complex portfolios of interventions.”