Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI)

Treatment for tuberculosis (TB), a disease that causes 1.7 million deaths every year, is generally considered to be the responsibility of the public sector; in fact, many believe that treatment should remain in government hospitals and clinics because they are more easily regulated and are generally required to follow WHO treatment guidelines. Nevertheless, studies have shown that the private sector plays a significant role in providing care for TB in many countries.

Over the past several years, eHealth (the use of information communication technology in health) has exploded onto the global health scene. Health programs all over the world are beginning to employ these new tools, funders are looking to support the most innovative and promising uses of information communication technology (ICT), and researchers are avidly discussing the benefits and downfalls of this new field. Despite the buzz around eHealth, studies on this field frequently focus on the work of specific programs; fewer studies have taken a higher level look at this field.

In this second blog post from the Inside the Database series, we look at a key variable from the CHMI Programs Database – primary source of funding. Many people ask us about funding: How can their programs get more, how other programs are funded and what are the best models for sustainable funding sources. Here, we share an aggregate picture of how programs in the CHMI database are funded.

• First, we looked at the overall distribution of primary source of funding for all 667 programs with data in this field.