“There
is a shift taking place in the public health arena to strategically engage the
private sector to address global health needs,” said Bridget McHenry, a fellow
for Global
Health Fellows Program II, serving as organizational development
adviser for Office of Population and Reproductive Health in U.S. Agency
for International Development’s Global Health Bureau.
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| A health worker visits a malaria patient in a rural village in Kenya. |
An increasing
number of companies are turning their attention — and their resources — to the
vast health needs of the global population for two essential reasons: It
represents opportunities to create shared value and it is foundational to a
thriving economy. Relatively new to the landscape of international development,
strategic partnerships help to guide the strategies, investments and
on-the-ground engagements that can inform the deployment of the resources only
the private sector can bring.
Working with
the Public Health Institute and its innovative work through the USAID-funded Global Health Fellows Program opened
my eyes to the realities, needs, and opportunities for the private, public, and
social sectors to engage in global health. It’s not news to the professionals
in this field that health is the base upon which development and commerce meet,
but it’s something that the rest of us might not see as clearly.
In 2010,
GHFP-II saw an opportunity to expand that kind of insight by linking with
PYXERA Global to create “Global Health Champions,” strengthening programming by
enabling non-profit organizations to work with corporations who place their
employees in short-term pro bono assignments that leverage their professional
expertise to improve health in underserved communities.
The U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals,
which were ratified last month, address global health challenges for people of
all economic and cultural backgrounds. The venn diagram below is one depiction
of how these goals interrelate. At the centre of the graphic, is one of the
most important points: partnership is required to achieve these goals. No one
organization — or one sector — can do it alone. The challenges these goals
represent require the innovative thinking from a diverse community of talent —
leveraging government, non-profit and private sector professionals alike.
Goal 3, for
example, is the most obvious health-related goal, because it speaks directly to
ensuring healthy lives and promotes wellbeing for all at all ages. When BD sends
its employees to Peru to provide professional assistance to Cervi Cusco, a non-profit
dedicated to preventing cervical cancer, and build the organization’s
capability to reach more than 35,000 underserved women from the Andes mountains
who often need to walk up to five hours for basic gynaecological services, they
are meeting a vital health need.
Perhaps
it’s not such a surprise that one of the world’s largest and most innovative
medical technology companies would be involved in such work. But would you
think of IBM, Dow and PepsiCo at the edge
of innovation for global health? These companies — and companies like them —
are champions for global health, and their work shows it.
Goal 2 speaks
to ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting
sustainable agriculture. When PepsiCorps provides Heifer
International South Africa, an NGO that works to provide people
with the skills and resources they need to expand their options for the future,
with the professional assistance to improve the quality of life of low-income
families by developing sustainable
agriculture, they are meeting an important health need.
Goal 6 speaks
to ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for
all. When Dow sends a Leadership in Action team to Ethiopia through the Dow
Sustainability Corps, to work with PSI and IMC on sanitation marketing, they
are meeting an important need.
In each of
these cases, corporations provided their skilled employees at no charge to the
host client to build capacity and enable them to better serve their clients and
meet their mission.
While the
private sector provides short term pro bono champions, the core of the GHFP-II
places global health professionals at different stages of their careers as
full-time fellows for two-four year assignments. This work augments USAID’s
technical capabilities to address key global health priority areas, while at
the same time further developing a diverse group of global health
professionals.
Bridget
McHenry is a prime example of the return on that investment. As a full-time
Global Health Fellow, she works with the Office of Population and Reproductive Health
to support the capacity of the public health supply chains in low- and
middle-income countries that receive donated contraceptives and medicines from
USAID. Through this work, she is identifying a sustainable workforce to help
the meet its mission in global health, which also directly contributes to Goal
8: “Promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive
employment, and decent work for all.”
“I didn’t
initially think of my fellowship as anything but global health because that is
the frame I have always thought of it in,” said McHenry. “But my fellowship is
about looking at public health systems and developing human resources capacity
— I bridge the gap between the outward face of public health, such as
physicians, and its inside workings, such as supply chain and logistics.”
McHenry
points out that the linkages with the private sector are critical as emerging
and frontier markets expand and logistics workforces are developed. “It’s
important to keep in mind that the skillsets required to ensure that
contraceptive and pharmaceuticals are available and accessible in the most
remote health outposts are the same capacities that drive commercial success as
well.”
There are a
number of other examples where organizations and individuals have provided the
assistance, including manufacturing and marketing assistance for clean
cookstoves; strategic communications that help prevent violence to women and
girls; logistical support to ensure reliable supply chains for medicines and
clinic suppliers; new financing models which secure affordable, reliable health
care. These are a few ways in which the private sector — especially in
partnership — can provide their assistance to build a world of better health
for all of us.
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About the author
Passionate about the power of business to help solve the world’s most intransigent problems, she leads the efforts to attract more participation of businesses to contribute to sustainable development through their people and their work. Prior to working for PYXERA Global, Laura was director of corporate citizenship at the Dow Corning Corporation. Her 30-year career in international business has included roles in HR, business development, finance, marketing, branding, communications, and corporate social responsibility, including the company’s public-private partnership with the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (a UN Foundation, U.S. State Department, and Clinton Global Initiative).
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