From the launch of the SMHS project, there has been an equal emphasis on direct support for two country engagements and broader learning to guide not just the primary work undertaken as part of the project, but also the global evidence and experience base. As such, every part of the project was designed to help provide insight into three major questions to inform the practice of strengthening mixed health systems:
- Is the approach of supporting public-private engagements to strengthen maternal and newborn health and UHC associated with outcomes including improved quality of engagement between the sectors and improvements in relevant health service outcomes?
- What factors are associated with helping to achieve intended outcomes, and what factors are associated with hindering engagements?
- What approaches can engagement brokers or supporters take to facilitate factors that help engagements, mitigate factors that hurt, and ultimately help engagements achieve better health outcomes?
This learning report is designed to present evidence for each of these questions from several different sources. While each of these pieces of research has its own detailed and valuable sets of findings, we see one of the greatest contributions of the SMHS products as its cross-cutting analysis and learning across a myriad of new and existing sources. As such, we created this larger Learning Report to achieve three key objectives:
- Present cross-cutting learnings and results from the project that center on answering the three research questions regarding outcomes, factors, and approaches to supporting or brokering MHS. Each piece of research only presents one important but narrow piece of these stories, and we seek to use this product to bring together the learnings in a way that reveals a more whole picture.
- Begin to understand the “so what.” While these research questions have clear relevance to the design and implementation of new and existing PPEs, research findings themselves alone are often not enough to provide actionable guidance to those working on these types of initiatives. Building off of the literature, we have developed both recommendations and tools in the form of assessments and curated guidance that can be applied to help partners transition from “what the evidence says” to “how can we apply this.”
- Identify what more is needed to improve the integration and effectiveness of mixed health systems. Our goal for this project was to begin filling some of the myriad gaps that exist in the growing literature and experience related to mixed health systems; however, as with any project, our research and practice both filled gaps and revealed new ones that are critical for policymakers, domestics private sector stakeholders, development partners, and international stakeholders wanting to support this work. In this report, we provide some potential next steps to continue to move the field forward.
