The Challenge
In many low- and middle-income countries around the world, more than half of all health spending is made up of out-of-pocket payments from consumers to providers of widely varying quality. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, people living in poverty use the private sector just as much as people with more resources. But appropriate care is often expensive and pushes people further into poverty. According to the World Health Organization, each year, 150 million people globally face severe financial hardship, 100 million are forced into poverty, and many forgo or delay care because they lack financial resources.
The Opportunity
When well monitored and regulated, health markets can be a source of creative new approaches with the potential to achieve greater efficiencies, improved quality, and increased access to care for underserved populations. Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social entrepreneurs, and private companies are implementing innovative programs and policies with the potential to improve health markets for the poor. Many of these health market innovations — often with potential to be expanded and replicated to serve more people — are not well known globally. There is an opportunity to adapt these innovative solutions across borders.
Our Work
R4D established the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) in 2010 to promote policies and practices that improve privately delivered health care for the poor in low- and middle- income countries.
R4D and partner organizations forming CHMI hubs around the world have gathered reliable, relevant, and up-to-date information on more than 1000 health market innovations in over 100 countries. This information is fed into a collaborative, searchable, free online platform that gives visitors the ability to download the entire database or to suggest new innovative programs for inclusion on the site.
In 2011, CHMI introduced its Reported Results Initiative to collect self-reported indicators of programmatic performance across key dimensions including access, affordability, efficiency, and quality.
With an aim to facilitate the expansion and adaptation of successful models, R4D connects donors, impact investors and policy makers to innovators running programs profiled in CHMI’s database.
For more information, visit the archived HealthMarketInnovations.org website.
