Male Contraception Initiative

Programs: Research advancement:in february we announced a request for proposals from researchers, with the best proposal slated to win a grant of $500,000, to be spent over three years. We received over 20 letters of intent, and invited 8 research teams to submit full proposals. To review the proposals, we used a formal process similar to that used by the us national institutes of health. In october, we announced the winner of the $500,000 grant - vibliome, a private startup company, working with researchers at montana state university, and at stanford university. Then we invited the other researchers who had submitted full proposals to apply for smaller pilot grants of $150,000 to be spent over two years. We expect to award several grants of $150,000 in 2018.

raising awareness:during the year, we were in touch with reporters on various topics related to the development of new male contraceptives, and we were mentioned or quoted in a wide variety of publications. Notably, we were quoted by writers for cnbc, the wall street journal, and scientific american. In september, the scientific journal contraception published an article that we wrote, titled, modeling the impact of novel male contraceptive methods on reductions in unintended pregnancies in nigeria, south africa, and the united states. The article was a result of a collaborative effort involving mci and authors based at six other organizations. The article concluded, even under conservative assumptions, the introduction of a male pill or temporary vas occlusion could meaningfully contribute to averting unintended pregnancies in a variety of contexts, especially in settings where current use of contraception is low.