Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA) Private Sector Task Force
The Private Sector Task Force will be comprised of senior health leaders and will be led by a Secretariat housed at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The Task Force will oversee and direct the Technical Working Group, a group of health experts that will be tasked to research, develop actionable information and propose activities to implement the Task Force objectives.
Goals
- Accelerate scaling and cross-border implementation of private health sector initiatives which increase health worker supply, effectiveness or retention
- Promote the development of the private health sector in two sub-Saharan African countries using a pilot test of a private health sector “incubator”
- Increase the capacity of Ministries of Health (MoH) in the two target countries to interact more effectively with the private health sector
- Apply learning from African incubator pilot to repeat in other African countries and other global regions in 2011 and beyond
Objectives
- Conduct a desk study of innovative private sector initiatives that address the human resources for health crisis and have demonstrated an interest in scaling up and/or crossing borders. (This desk study will build on the Duke University report submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation in 2008 and will result in a seed list of projects for consideration by the partners in the target countries.)
- Select two sub-Saharan African countries that have demonstrated an interest and willingness to increase their capacity to interact more effectively with the private health sector (potential countries of interest include Kenya, Mali, and Zambia).
- Identify health care needs in the local environments of the target countries.
- Assess the capacity of the local private health sector to grow in the target countries.
- Recruit local partners/affiliates and identify potential collaborators to provide in-country support for Task Force activities. Potential partners include:
- Providers: doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, other health-sector actors and their representative groups (e.g. unions)
- Consumers: disease-based organizations, local and regional consumer groups, women’s organizations, military groups, etc
- Businesses: businesses which serve patients and/or provide products and services in the health sector
- Health-development groups: multilateral development banks, bilateral aid agencies, international health organizations, nongovernmental development organizations
- Ministries of Health and other governmental representatives
- Analyze a small number of local private health sector initiatives in the target countries and assess the enabling environments that allow these private sector businesses/initiatives to flourish.
- Facilitate a match-making activity in each target country to bring successful private health sector initiatives, sources of capital, and technical resources together. (A forum or investment fair could act as a convening mechanism to bring these partners together.)
- Initiate an incubator in each target country to facilitate the scaling up of one innovative private health sector initiative. (The incubator could take the form of an event, a process or a location.)
- Evaluate the success of each new initiative spawned from the incubator and apply lessons learned to other countries.
Private Health Sector Incubator
The activities of the Task Force will culminate in the development and pilot of a “private health sector incubator.” Business incubators have been used to spawn new enterprises using stakeholders from different sectors (public, private, government) in order to address gaps in areas of required support. The proposed private health sector incubator, initially piloted for select countries in sub-Saharan Africa, will provide networks, capital funds, and business support structures and functions to develop and nurture identified private health sector start-ups focused on building health workforce capacity. The incubator will match the health needs of countries with promising private sector initiatives. The goal is for new initiatives to be spawned in African countries of interest thus assisting cross-border movement and stimulating increased development in the private sector.
Organizational Structure
Co-Chairs: Michael H. Merson, MD, Director, Duke Global Health Institute and Brian A. Brink, MD, Group Medical Consultant, Anglo American plc
Secretariat Staff:.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), Task Force Director and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), Task Force Officer
Task Force Members:
- Elizabeth Ashbourne, Health Metrics Network, The World Bank
- Victor Barnes, Director, HIV/AIDS and Health Initiative, The Corporate Council on Africa
- Kathy Cahill, Deputy Director, Delivery and Access Strategies, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Dr. Manuel Dayrit, Director, Human Resources for Health, World Health Organization
- Renuka Gadde, Director of Global Health, Becton Dickinson and Co.
- Christophe Lemiere, Health Specialist, Human Resources for Health, Africa Region, The World Bank
- Stefan Nachuk, Associate Director, The Rockefeller Foundation
- Dr. Francis Omaswa, Director of the African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation (ACHEST)
- Professor Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India
- Dr. Ken Sagoe, Director Human Resources, Ghana Health Service
Technical Working Group Members
- Ricardo Bitran, Senior Economist, Bitran and Associates
- Dr. Delanyo Dovlo, Health Systems Adviser, Organization and Management of Health Services, Department for Health System Governance and Service Delivery (HDS), WHO
- Jeff Moe, Senior Director, Business Development, Duke University, Fuqua School of Business
- Marty Makinen, Managing Director, Results for Development Institute
- Neeraj Sood, Economist, RAND Corporation