0.6 Acknowledgements

This is a large collaborative project. We have been extremely fortunate in the number of highly talented and exceptionally fun-to-work-with individuals who have contributed to it. Part of the discussion of Project RISE’s findings likens the perinatal journey to a play, whereby different potential sources of influence are on the ‘stage’ for a pregnant woman at different times. The analogy makes a point about access, messaging, and the importance of the constellations of actors at any given time who are interacting with a woman during this time. This Project spanned over three years, with more than half of that time overlapping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The people involved in the project experienced many things during this time, some had to change careers and others were intentionally on stage for brief, impactful moments. We cannot do all of those nuances justice here but we wish to gratefully acknowledge and thank the full caste of characters who helped shape Project RISE. An undoubtedly non-exhaustive list of people we offer our utmost thanks and appreciate:

In our meetings and touchpoints we received key intellectual and design support from Neela Saldanha, Janine Schooley, Siddharta Swarup, and Nachiket Mor. From the design team at SCOPE we thank Priyam Sharda, Shalini Subbiah, Joseph Savage, Alexandra Mandelbaum, and Mari Tikkanen. From PCI-India we thank Indrajit Chaudhuri, Santosh Akhauri, Sudipta Mondal, Harsh Mandlik. We are grateful to the PCI investigators who collected the majority of the data: Abha Kumari, Archana Sinha, Babita Kumari, Chhaya Kumari, Dimple Kumari, Jyoti Kumari, Kajal, Kanchan Kumari, Kumari Punam, Mina Devi, Nutan Jha, Pammi Kumari, Risha Kumari, Shashiprabha, Suman Kumari, as well as to those who superviced data collection: Rajesh Tiwari, Neeraj Kumar, Sunil Kumar Akela, Amit Kumar.

Sinjini Mukherjee collected the data in the extended qualitative studies. We thank Purnima Mehrotra, Sita Sanjivini Sawhney, Shriti Munshi for support with data collection and project infrastructure. Caroline Garry made some excellent data visualizations. Advice on presentation and data analysis was graciously provided by Jonathan Fox, Lawrence Todd, Brent Schwan, and Lydia Chen. And especially we thank the many generous and patient individuals in Bihar who participated in this study.

This project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Opportunity ID: OPP1178978, Project Title: The impact of ritual on healthcare provider behavior in Bihar, India).