Public-Private Engagement

Throughout many low- and middle-income countries, the private sector is an active, growing player in the delivery of health, education and nutrition services. Many citizens proactively seek health care or educational services from the private sector, either because of their proximity to private facilities or because they perceive the private sector to offer better quality or customer service than the public sector. However, the private sector is often fragmented, and despite government interest in engaging with the private sector, government officials lack information, do not understand their roles or are not supported by the appropriate institutional systems and processes to steward public-private systems in their countries. This results in varied quality and costs of services.

Our goal is to effectively leverage the unique contributions of the public and private sectors in order to improve health, education and nutrition service delivery. We do this in the following ways:

• Supporting private-sector (non-state) actors to adapt, test and operationalize promising innovative models in healthcare, education and nutrition through active and effective collaborative learning networks.
• Providing technical assistance in diagnosing health system misalignments, effectively incentivizing high-quality care and services, and monitoring performance of care and services to better steward the public sector.
• Supporting cross-country collaborative peer-learning platforms and innovation communities such as the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage and the Center for Health Market Innovations.
• Designing, evaluating and learning about innovative approaches to public-private-sector engagement.
• Review of the evidence on taking a food systems approach to develop food and nutrition-related policies, including multisectoral and private sector engagements