Prototyping Gender Equality Design Labs

Challenge

Too often, health innovations are driven by scientific breakthroughs addressing the health contexts of global minority communities. These innovations are then deployed in global majority countries without considering the communities’ values, priorities, cultures, and needs. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality Data & Insights (GE D&I) Team understands that its strategy and investments around innovations will be more impactful by engaging women and girls in global majority communities in the decision-making processes early and often. 

Work

Over the next 12+ months, Catapult Design, in collaboration with our Design Partners, will facilitate Design Labs aimed at testing ideas and establishing a mechanism for continued engagement with women representing priority Pathways segments. Our goal is to reframe GE D&I’s priority hypotheses and identify opportunity areas for future innovations impacting women’s and girls’ health.

The project will commence in Ethiopia through our partnership with Zede Consulting. We’ll extend our efforts in Nigeria through our collaboration with Dodo Design, and finally in Pakistan, as we work alongside Ideate Innovation.

This initiative signifies a significant achievement in a journey spanning over five years. During this time, Catapult Design has been in a tight-knit partnership with our design collaborators, working closely with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on a project focused on contraceptive innovations. 

Our involvement with Making it Real has demonstrated that our immersive approach can exert significant influence and result in more actionable insights when we engage with women and decision-makers in the earlier stages of the innovation process.

Results

This work is currently underway, so stay tuned for updates.