Drug Resistant-Tuberculosis Lifeline QuickFire Challenge
Drug Resistant-Tuberculosis Lifeline QuickFire Challenge - Exciting opportunity with up to $250,000 in grant funding
Application Deadline: 19 May 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc the world over, having a potentially devastating impact on the health of the most vulnerable, including those living with tuberculosis (TB). 
TB, the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killed 1.5 million people in 2018 – over 4,000 people a day in a pre-COVID world. Of the estimated 10 million TB cases that year, about 500,000 developed drug-resistant (DR-) TB, which does not respond to the most powerful TB medicines. DR-TB requires additional diagnostic processes and lengthy treatments. Prior to the pandemic, only an estimated 1 in 5 DR-TB patients successfully navigated their care.
COVID-19 presents new challenges and concerns, as patients and survivors with respiratory impairment and/or lung damage may be more vulnerable to serious complications from COVID-19. Beyond individual vulnerability, the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously disrupted and weakened already-fragile systems of delivering care to DR-TB patients. There is a clear need for community engagement and innovation with the aim to solve for the continuity of DR-TB services during the pandemic and after, since health systems will take time to return to efficiency.
To that end, Johnson & Johnson’s Global Public Health team, together with Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS, is seeking innovative proposals for creative, easy-to-implement ideas – that can start having impact immediately. Submissions should address continuity of DR-TB care for patients in high-burden countries (e.g., India, Indonesia, Philippines, South Africa, Ukraine). Specifically, we are looking for ideas that address one or more of the following areas:
- Remote consultations and follow-up
- Home-based and/or digital patient support for sustaining TB treatment adherence & completion
- Access to care for adverse events without leaving the home
- Connections to support mental health, nutrition, address social isolation, and peer-to-peer support as well as social benefits
Up to five innovators with the best ideas, technologies, or potential solutions could be awarded grant funding from a total of $250,000*. Awardees will also have the opportunity to engage with experts at the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies to help support bringing their ideas to life.
* Up to $50,000 in grant funding each for up to five awardees