Implementation Research and Innovation Support (IRIS) for Family Planning
IRIS is an innovative facility supporting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to generate and share actionable evidence on effective, efficient, scalable supply and demand interventions in family planning (FP).
Project team members
Tata Chanturidze , Paula Baraitser , Mike Low , Hannah Taylor , Diwakar Mohan , Pooja Singh , Shuchi Srinivasan , Rhiana Mills , Christopher Tomlinson , Patrick Kayigamba
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DateJuly 2022 - May 2024
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Areas of expertiseHealth , Research and Evidence (R&E)
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Client
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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CountriesEthiopia , India , Kenya , Nigeria , Pakistan
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KeywordsEvidence use , Quantitative methods , Health service organisation and delivery (HSOD) , Health systems governance (HSG) , Community health workers (CHWs) , Family Planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health (FP and SRP) , Maternal Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) , Primary Health Care , Universal Health Coverage (UHC) , Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) , Research Management
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OfficeOPM United Kingdom
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Project number
A5011
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Project status
Active
IRIS provides technical assistance (TA) to support research, evaluation and learning dissemination associated with the Foundation's family planning projects.
IRIS achieves this through three main activities:
- Robust TA in FP research design, planning and delivery to support the foundation's Program Officers (POs) maximise learning from projects in key areas, including: pharmacy provision of FP, direct to consumer/digital counselling (DTC/DC) and demand-side interventions. This work supports problem definition, proof of concept, effectiveness research and implementation research.
- Providing a mechanism to source, engage, and manage external TA and consultancy providers in the priority geographies, including Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, as well as Ouagadougou partnership countries.
- Facilitating knowledge synthesis and learning dissemination to improve understanding of effective and scalable FP initiatives.
To achieve its objectives, IRIS works with external service providers – independent researchers, consultants, and partner organisations, to solicit the best available expertise for delivering the foundation's assignments. IRIS is proud of the strong, in-house technical, management and leadership teams, enabling fast response to the foundation's requests and accelerating outcomes and impact of the foundation support to FP research and knowledge sharing initiatives.
Expected outcomes:
IRIS is well designed to capture advancements in FP research, and generate robust evidence on effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, and scalability of FP interventions in the foundation's priority countries and beyond. Through generating, synthesising and disseminating research findings, IRIS supports innovation in FP initiatives with personal, social and economic benefits for women, their partners and their families.