Outside Resources
The web portals listed below host comprehensive resource libraries that aggregate hundreds of documents on topics relevant to health markets and private health care providers in developing countries. All documents are free and downloadable.
Online Portals
SHOPS Resource Center
USAID's SHOPS project website hosts a large searchable resource library containing close to 1000 publications on the private health sector. Resources can be viewed by one or more filters (author, topic, country, and resource type). The online library includes a broad range of resource types, ranging from articles and country assessment reports, to case studies, handbooks, briefs and presentations.
PS4H: Private Health Sector in Developing Countries
This site -- authored by Dominic Montagu (Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF) -- provides access to a large selection of resources on topics relating to private sector health services in developing countries. The documents are organized by mechanism (service delivery, financing, and levers of control) and disease area.
IFC and World Bank Group Resources The IFC's Health Policy Toolkit offers health policy stakeholders and practitioners online access to information about policies and practices that can help enhance the contribution of the private sector to important health goals in developing countries.
PSP - Private Sector Programme in Health
Karolinska Institutet's Division of Global Health (IHCAR) maintains a comprehensive list of academic publications that examine the role of the private health sector in low- and middle-income countries. Documents are organized by year of publication, going back to the 1980s.
NDTV's Jeene Ki Aasha Campaign
NDTV has launched a 6 month long project to focus attention on the diseases and health conditions that disproportionately affect pregnant women and children up to the age of 5 years. The series, “Jeene Ki Aasha” highlights the crucial issues and path-breaking initiatives, from across the country, simple interventions suggested by external experts, and act as a clearing-house for people who want to know more and get involved by posting their comments. The series sheds light on a number of CHMI profiled initiatives such as SEARCH and Janani Suraksha Yojana.
Relevant Reports
The following reports were consulted as sources of multiple programs in building the Center for Health Market Innovations' Programs Database.
UCSF Global Health Group Compendia on Clinical Social Franchising
The GHG has published two annual compendia of clinical social franchise programs. The first features descriptions and data from the 30 programs that operated in 2008 and the second includes the 40 programs that operated in 2009, a testament to the rapidly growing and changing field of social franchising in developing countries. The profiles and analysis in these documents describe new innovations in financing, healthcare delivery, technology and involvement of community health workers, as well as the successes and challenges of each franchise; the compendia aim to provide lessons and a basis for further communication among implementers and stakeholders of social franchising programs worldwide. Support for this work is provided by the Rockefeller Foundation.
DKT Worldwide Social Marketing Statistics
DKT International compiles information about over 60 social marketing programs around the world and ranks them using standard conversion factors for Couple Years of Protection (CYP) (e.g., 1 CYP equals 100 Condoms; 14 Pill cycles; 4 Injections, etc.). The programs highlighted on the “Best Programs” list deliver more than 200,000 CYPs per year and reach more than 6% of their target markets.
Protecting the Poor: A Microinsurance Compendium
This report was produced by the International Labour Organization (ILO), Munich Re Foundation and the CGAP Working Group on Microinsurance and edited by Craig Churchill of the ILO's Social Finance Programme. Based on an analysis of over 40 microinsurance schemes around the world, and drawing on the expertise of more than 35 authors, the report synthesizes key lessons about the provision of insurance to low-income households. The Compendium includes a large section on micro-health insurance best practices along with a comprehensive list of programs.
IFC Report: The Business of Health in Africa: Partnering with the Private Sector to Improve People's Lives
This study, conducted by IFC with assistance from McKinsey & Company, describes opportunities for engaging and supporting a well managed and effectively regulated private sector to improve Africa’s health. It highlights the critical role the private sector can play in meeting the need for more and higher-quality health care in Sub- Saharan Africa. It also identifies policy changes that governments and international donors can make to enable the private sector to take on an ever more meaningful role in closing Africa’s
health care gap.
UNICEF Report: Providers and Health Service Delivery in the EAP Region
This background report was prepared for UNICEF for the ADB-UNICEF Workshop on “The Role of Non-State Providers in Delivering Basic Services for Children”.The report is designed to serve as a foundation for future activities to improve the healthcare available to children in the East Asia and Pacific Region (EAPR). Its focus is the role of the private sector (non-State actors), both for profit and nonprofit, in the provision of healthcare services in the Region. It places particular emphasis on services and commodities relevant to the health of poor children, and on the options available to governments to address different aspects of private provision. To illustrate, the report provides an overview of the role of the private sector in health systems in the region; an introduction to the kinds of programs, policies, and activities that are currently having an effect on privately provided healthcare including their relative importance; and recommends a typology of private sector options available to countries in the region.
Monitor Report: Emerging Markets, Emerging Models: Market-Based Solutions to the Challenges of Global Poverty
This report investigates “Market-Based Solutions” in a number of social sectors as a means to help those residing at the base of the global income pyramid. It determines that these solutions can be an alternative and complement to traditional government expenditures, aid, and philanthropy, market-based solutions give low-income people better access to socially beneficial products and services that genuinely and directly improve the quality of their lives and livelihoods.
UNDP Report: Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor
This report, the first in a series, advances UNDP’s efforts to turn ideas and analysis into action through a dialogue with the private sector, government and civil society. It is the product of research based on 50 case studies of innovative models in a number of sectors (health, education, agriculture, water & sanitation, etc), writing and reviews by a network of developing country academics and a diverse advisory group of institutions with expertise in the private sector’s role in development.
A Review of USAID's Experience with the
Private Sector in Health : 1968-2009
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has taken note of the pervasive role of the private sector in health services and the sector’s potential for accelerating and expanding the uptake of health technologies developed by the Foundation. The Foundation decided to examine the experience of USAID, generally acknowledged by the donor community to be a leader in promoting a vigorous role for the private sector in health service delivery in developing countries. The Foundation requested this study—a distillation of the key lessons emerging from USAID’s experience over the past 40 years—as a way to identify promising lines of future work and absorb any cautionary lessons that could help it avoid the pitfalls encountered by USAID over the years.