BEAM webinar: Innovations in applying market systems approaches to the health sector

How can market system approaches be used to support health provision for large numbers of low income people? The fourth BEAM Exchange learning webinar, on Tuesday, February 17 2015 at 2-3pm GMT, will explore how innovations taking place in the health sector are using a market systems approach to improve health services and economic opportunities.

The role of private actors has grown significantly in the health arena over the past 20 years. Developing countries' health systems are increasingly mixed, with market forces operating across most parts of the system. However, past development programming has tended to focus on the public health agenda; the for-profit private sector is often viewed as an opportunistic outsider and marginalised in overall healthcare strategy. Whereas the private sector has regularly been used as a vehicle to deliver public goods, very little development programming has considered healthcare as a complex market system that incorporates a business agenda. This webinar will consider the changing role of the private sector in health provision in developing countries. It will then focus on the experiences of two programmes on the ground that incorporate a market systems approach in health sector development.

We will be joined by Thomas Feeny (Harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor, HANSHEP) who will introduce the latest thinking and trends in private sector development and health. Ron Ashkin (Private Sector Innovation Programme for Health, PSP4H) will share insights from PSP4H's work in Kenya on how a market systems approach might benefit pro-poor health interventions. And Kolawole Maxwell from Malaria Consortium will highlight how SuNMaP (Support to National Malaria Programme), a DFID-funded programme, is supporting the Nigerian government and people in tackling the massive burden of malaria in the country.

The webinar is also an opportunity for you to ask questions, contribute your experience and suggest how the learning agenda on how market systems approaches in health, and other basic service sectors, can be taken forward.

To attend, please click here to register.