An initiative of the Advancing Injectable Markets for Sustainability (AIMS) project

AIMS will award successful proposals up to US$200,000 for a 9-month award period.

Often women are unable to access self-injectable contraception because of gaps in provider training, supply chains, medical waste management, and other issues. D-Prize is helping to address these gaps by funding aspiring entrepreneurs to expand access to DMPA-SC in low-income countries.

Each D-Prize award winner will receive up to US$20,000 to launch a nonprofit or social venture tackling a DMPA-SC access gap. Applicants should be entrepreneurial and ready to commit full-time to their venture if the pilot succeeds. Organizations that apply should be entirely new or at a very early stage (under 18 months old or raised less than US$30,000).

2026 deadlines
Early: May 17 | Regular: June 7 | Extension: June 28

There are five specific calls for new ventures addressing DMPA-SC gaps:
• Improving provider training
• Last-mile supply chain management
• Medical waste management
• Reaching underserved populations
• Propose an approach not listed above

Learn more and apply at www.d-prize.org.

The Advancing Injectable Markets for Sustainability (AIMS) project provides free data-driven technical assistance (TA), coordination, resources, and tools to ensure that women and girls have increased access to DMPA-SC and self-injection as part of an expanded range of contraceptive methods, delivered through informed choice programming.

Partners can access TA by submitting a request to the AIMS team at FPoptions@path.org.

PATH has developed this comprehensive suite of scientific communications materials to support evidence-based introduction and scale-up of DMPA-SC and self-injection (SI).

This resource provides a high-level summary of the current state of self-injection policy development, implementation, and monitoring in each of the Injectables Access Collaborative’s 11 focus countries: Benin, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. The policy cycle landscape (i.e., policy development, implementation, and monitoring) features an overview of the enabling environment for self-injection in each country, including general self-injection and self-care policies, as well as local authorizations for task-sharing/task-shifting. The information is current as of Quarter 2, 2025.

PATH has compiled a list featuring presentations, posters, and events on the topic of DMPA-SC, including self-injection and self-care, to be featured at the International Conference on Family Planning on 3-6 November 2025. The list linked below includes nearly 70 abstracts highlighting the latest DMPA-SC research and implementation experience from a diverse array of partner organizations.

Special journal supplement

In this special issue, the Gates Foundation invested in a coordinated effort to understand how self-injection can be best introduced into different markets across six countries (Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi, Pakistan, and India). Within this effort, the Gates Foundation sought assistance from the University of California San Francisco to launch the Self-Injection Learning Exchange with two goals: (1) Aggregate and synthesize grantee learnings and (2) Share resources and facilitate discussions of emergent findings. Made up of twelve different grantees and two funders, the Gates Foundation and the Children’s Investment Fund (who have jointly funded self-injection investments), the Learning Exchange synthesizes findings and progress across 12 investments into a quarterly slide deck, meets quarterly with funders and grantees, and has organized this special supplement.

The objective of this supplement is to capitalize on this unique opportunity to reflect across a set of coordinated investments, to bring together diverse and complementary studies on self-injection, and to offer commentary related to lessons learned from this coordinated effort.

This medication use evaluation assessed the impact of an initiative at North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Health System (NFSGVHS) in the United States to offer patients self-administered DMPA-SC. A retrospective chart review of electronic health records was conducted for patients who received ≥ 1 outpatient prescription for DMPA-SC from June 1, 2022 to July 1, 2023. Forty patients initiated self-administered DMPA-SC. A subgroup of patients were contacted via telephone as a follow-up to determine if there were unmet needs for ongoing contraceptive care. The uptake in prescribing suggests that clinicians and patients have embraced self-administration of DMPA-SC within the NFSGVHS.

Brown JM, Pardo KM. Federal Practitioner. 2025;42(8):314-317. doi:10.12788/fp.0614

This webinar held on January 16, 2025 was hosted by the Injectables Access Collaborative Learning and Action Network in collaboration with the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition’s (RHSC) New and Underused Reproductive Health Technologies Caucus (NURHT).  The discussion focused on advocacy strategies for reproductive health product introduction, scale-up, and institutionalization, emphasizing what it takes to see tangible change.

Presenters shared advocacy strategies and tactics that have successfully driven change—highlighting what is needed in the often-complex space between securing an advocacy win and seeing progress toward the desired outcome. Topics included increasing access to DMPA-SC self-injection, advancing menstrual health product standards, and facilitating country-level procurement of the hormonal intrauterine device (IUD).

This lesson is intended for health care providers learning to counsel family planning clients about DMPA-SC and self-injection in the context of informed choice. Developed by the Injectables Access Collaborative, the lesson incorporates key content from the more in-depth DMPA-SC self-injection empathy-based counseling developed by the PSI Delivering Innovation in Self-Care (DISC) project. The lesson can be incorporated into a comprehensive training on DMPA-SC or adapted as a refresher training for experienced providers.

Please contact FPoptions@path.org with questions or comments.