Health sector innovation
BEAM webinar: Innovations in applying market systems approaches to the health sector, February 17 2015.
Speakers: Thomas Feeney, HANSHEP, Ron Ashkin, PSP4H, and Kolawole Maxwell, SuNMaP.
How can market system approaches be used to support health provision for large numbers of low income people? This BEAM webinar explored how innovations 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 considered the changing role of the private sector in health provision in developing countries. It also explored the experiences of two programmes on the ground that incorporate a market systems approach in health sector development.