Many countries struggle to translate health financing evidence into actionable policy decisions and progress. Greater involvement of stakeholders such as civil society, the private sector, and Ministries of Finance is essential to improve implementation and accountability. To that end, ACS will find synergies with existing health financing initiatives to build country skills in facilitation, learning processes, communication and accountability that will help evidence-based technical solutions gain traction.

“Building on the strong political commitment and resources already available in many countries, the African Collaborative for Health Financing Solutions will bring a diverse set of actors to the table to figure out how to translate evidence to action to make progress toward UHC,” said Gina Lagomarsino, president and CEO at Results for Development. “We’re thrilled to lead this new project, and look forward to working with partners in the region.”

Working with country and regional stakeholders to better navigate their own path to UHC, ACS will: support transparent and inclusive country conversations to identify challenges, test solutions, and support implementation; build capacity and commitment at the national level and between countries to help to translate health financing tools to local contexts; and leverage regional networks and institutions to support countries in reaching their goals.

“UHC is a long process that we fundamentally believe must be country-driven,” said Allison Kelley, ACS project director at Results for Development. “The key to success is first to listen to country challenges and priorities, then to support them to make real progress. This means moving beyond technical approaches to a more inclusive, facilitated process at country-level.”

At the outset, ACS will embark on a consultation phase, engaging with stakeholders to understand challenges, assess demand, and shape the program of work.

This web announcement is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of Results for Development, Global Health Innovation Center, Duke University, and Feed the Children and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

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Since 2016, Global Innovation Exchange (GIE) has been managed by Results for Development (R4D) and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Australian Department of Foreign Assistance and Trade (Australian Aid), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The current version of the platform was launched in 2017 at USAID’s Global Innovation Week. Since then, GIE has grown to include more than 16,000 innovations. More than 5,000 of these innovations also have a “verified” badge based on input from 50+ partners.

Over the years, the platform has had many other notable achievements, including: 

• GIE’s most popular functionality has been the Funding Directory, with new funding opportunities open for applications added every week. Nearly 70% of the users consistently reported that they discovered at least one opportunity that was a good fit for their innovation on every visit. Innovators have also shared stories of how GIE made fundraising easier and increased their operational capacity. Currently GIE has more than 500 funding opportunities that are still open for applications. These will remain available for browsing until late August.
• GIE’s Innovation Finder Service provided curated shortlists of innovations for partners. 
• GIE ran an engaging 3-part digital workshop to train and help innovators refine their pitch on their path to getting investment ready. Innovators participated in a Digital Pitch Contest for a chance to win a grand prize worth USD 15,000 to support storytelling and fundraising for their innovation. 
• GIE rapidly launched the COVID-19 Innovation Hub in response to the pandemic in May 2020 to celebrate, source and supply COVID-19 related innovations across 12 response areas. Similarly, GIE has supported many partners over the years to develop their own customized innovation-related websites on the GIE platform. As these sites use the GIE infrastructure, they will be/have been discontinued or transitioned to a new platform before GIE sunsets where their content will be accessible via their current links. See the table below for the status and plans for each of the active GIE Custom sites that are transitioning.
• GIE has partnered with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs since 2017 to run an annual open Call for Innovations. In 2021, the winners from the 2020 and 2021 Call, were featured in a dynamic Virtual Innovation Exhibit at the UN’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Forum. This 6-part panel series featured innovators working on education; food systems; maternal, newborn, and child health; the environment or vulnerable communities.
• Although GIE has had many successes, responding to the changing global context in 2020, the GIE team conducted research about the barriers to scaling the impact of development innovations and the right role, if any, for technology platforms in addressing the barriers. These findings and other GIE lessons learned will be shared in the coming months.

In the absence of sufficient funding, especially to make the necessary adjustments informed by the research, the GIE platform will sunset in late August.

The GIE Innovation Directory will remain available for browsing until late August. After that, R4D will share a modified version of the publicly available innovation information on these profiles via the R4D website. In line with GIE’s public good objectives, the archive will be an editable spreadsheet and publicly available for anyone to download to analyze, curate, or augment it for their programming.

R4D will continue to work on other initiatives and programs to scale up innovations and strengthen innovation ecosystems that leverage GIE learning, data and network in alignment with R4D’s mission to create self-sustaining systems that support healthy, educated people. Learn more about R4D’s Innovation Practice here.

GIE’s transitioning platforms

The GIE Custom sites that are currently using the GIE infrastructure will be/have been discontinued or transitioned to a new platform where their content will remain accessible via their current links. See the below table for the evolving status of the GIE Custom sites in the short-term.

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About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too. 

Global Innovation Exchange (GIE) is managed by Results for Development (R4D)’s Innovation Practice which works on scaling up innovations and innovation ecosystem strengthening across several programs such as the International Development Innovation Alliance and Million Lives Club. Over the years, GIE and R4D have worked with partners on various 

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As the world counts down to the 2025 World Health Assembly nutrition targets and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, millions of women, children, and adolescents worldwide remain undernourished (underweight, stunted, and deficient in micronutrients), despite evidence on effective interventions and increasing political commitment to, and financial investment in, nutrition. The COVID-19 pandemic has crippled health systems, exacerbated household food insecurity, and reversed economic growth, which together could set back improvements in undernutrition across low-income and middle-income countries. This paper highlights how the evidence base for nutrition, health, food systems, social protection, and water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions has evolved since the 2013 Lancet Series on maternal and child nutrition and identifies the priority actions needed to regain and accelerate progress within the next decade. Policies and interventions targeting the first 1000 days of life, including some newly identified since 2013, require renewed commitment, implementation research, and increased funding from both domestic and global actors. A new body of evidence from national and state-level success stories in stunting reduction reinforces the crucial importance of multisectoral actions to address the underlying determinants of undernutrition and identifies key features of enabling political environments. To support these actions, well-resourced nutrition data and information systems are essential. The paper concludes with a call to action for the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Summit to unite global and national nutrition stakeholders around common priorities to tackle a large, unfinished undernutrition agenda—now amplified by the COVID-19 crisis.

To read the full paper, click here.

Photo © Clement Tardif, Feed the Future

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The Resilient Health Systems Call sought innovations focused on supporting countries to continue delivery of essential health services (e.g., maternal and child health, noncommunicable diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, etc.), which are facing major disruptions as a result of the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, with decades of progress threatened.

Gina Lagomarsino, R4D’s president and CEO, said: “As the world battles COVID, it has been such a ray of light to see so many innovative ideas for maintaining essential services despite serious current challenges. The COVIDaction initiative highlights the potential for health systems to innovate and come out even stronger after the pandemic.”

R4D supported FCDO in shaping the Open Call for Innovations by talking to health systems experts and change agents about the kind of support countries in Africa and South Asia need in the midst of the pandemic. Together, we circulated the call widely. Applicants shared technology and innovations to respond to the two call themes: 1) changing the delivery models of health services to extend the reach and continuity of support from hospitals and clinics to households and communities, and 2) improving the collection and use of data, reducing fragmentation, and integrating data systems.

The R4D team also led a three-round judging process with health systems and digital health experts to narrow the list of awardees and select finalists, and then worked with FCDO experts to review and select grantees.

In addition to providing financial support, COVIDaction is also supporting these organizations and partnerships with technical assistance, including networking and profile-raising, and cross-innovation peer learning. As COVIDaction kicks off one-year demonstration projects with each of the grantees, additional packages of technical assistance will be defined, including business model support and sustainability planning, technology development support, ecosystem connections, and so on. We are also launching an adaptive learning process to document lessons on scaling and integration of health care innovations.

Annette Ozaltin, an R4D senior fellow who managed the open call, said: “The COVIDaction team is very grateful to FCDO for the opportunity to lead this call, recognizing the importance of strengthening health systems and emphasizing the maintenance of essential health services while so much attention is on the direct response to COVID-19. We are also grateful to FCDO for expanding the funding envelope to support many more grantees at a more generous level than originally planned.”

She added: “We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the health systems and digital health experts who helped us through the review process of all the submissions, and whose feedback was instrumental in selecting the finalists. We were so inspired by the many great innovations submitted to the call. There is a strong community of innovators supporting countries to build resilient health systems through the pandemic and beyond, and we are eager to continue to learn from their efforts.”

The nine grantees include:  

Concern Worldwide, Digital Healthcare Solutions, mPower & SAJIDA Foundation

This multisectoral partnership is establishing a platform for local pharmacy owners in Bangladesh to connect end beneficiaries with primary healthcare doctors using pharmacy logistics as a local telemedicine hub. The partners will be increasing access to quality health services for the most disadvantaged, leveraging and integrating their e-learning application for rural health workers, mCare, and their consumer application for remote doctor consultations, Digital Hospital (formerly TONIC).

Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University

The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Uganda is assuring continuity of quality care through their Digital Prevention, Care and Treatment (D-PCT) innovation, which accelerates remotely accessible health services for people living with HIV and tuberculosis. IDI is deploying its interactive voice response tool (Call for Life) and pharmacy refill app (ARTAccess) in clinics and pharmacies to address overcrowded health facilities, healthcare worker shortages, and problems with access to medicines due to gaps in supply chain systems and infrastructure.

Kenya Healthcare Federation, Amref Health Africa, & Partners

This strategic partnership was formed in direct response to pandemic restrictions imposed by the Government of Kenya, and is composed of the Kenya Healthcare Federation, Amref Health Africa, Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Nairobi Metropolitan Health Department, Bolt, rescue.co, TeleSky, and the University of Nairobi. The partners’ Wheels for Life innovation provides teleconsultations to pregnant women and taxi or ambulance services for pregnancy-related emergencies and tackling transport challenges.

mDoc Healthcare

mDoc Healthcare is a digital health social enterprise, based in Nigeria, that leverages Quality Improvement, behavioural science, and digital technology to reduce the chronic disease burden in Africa. mDoc’s innovation, CompleteHealth, offers integrated care support to people with chronic health needs by providing self-management techniques digitally and in-person, while also helping health care providers to deliver evidence-based care. mDoc is prioritizing technology augmentation and testing to strengthen its platform to provide self-care support for low-income users. 

GBCHealth and Greenmash

GBCHealth and Greenmash are working with the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) project to roll out Mango in the Sahel, a mobile application platform to improve commodity tracking, reduce stock-outs, and enhance timely data essential in managing outbreaks, treatments, and health education. Their partnership is focused on increasing access to commodities while bringing efficiencies to supply chain management, which directly relates to one of SWEDD’s priority interventions: reinforcing the regional availability of reproductive, maternal, newborn, child health and nutrition (RMNCHN) commodities and qualified health workers.

Living Goods

Living Goods is partnering with the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH) and other stakeholders to select, develop, and implement an Electronic Community Health Information System (eCHIS). The eCHIS is part of the MOH’s broader agenda to establish a robust, interoperable end to end health information system, resolving challenges of fragmented data and suboptimal data use and exchange of information from communities and health facilities, to county and national levels. The eCHIS will feed quality, timely data from the community up to the national level, fitting into the defined national health system architecture.

Medical Teams International & Shifo Foundation

The partners are integrating Smart Paper Technology (SPT) in health facilities in refugee-hosting districts in Uganda. SPT is a simple solution (hybrid paper-digital) that counts uncounted women and children, reduces health workers’ time doing administrative tasks, generates accurate programmatic and supply chain data, improves governance and accountability at all levels, and promotes cost-effective, sustainable and appropriate solutions. Medical Teams International & Shifo Foundation are working with the Government of Uganda to ultimately scale SPT across Uganda, and eventually other refugee-hosting countries.

Source Code

Source Code’s mHealth platform, PENSA *660#, is a free multi-channel and bi-directional platform that runs on all mobile network operators in Mozambique and is designed to distribute health information and services to all Mozambicans, including those living in rural areas and using low-tech phones. Source Code is working with the Ministry of Health to ensure that policymakers and practitioners effectively engage with and take action on data collected from their citizenry, and is also working to augment the platform based on user requirements.

Vaccine Confidence Project

The Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, in partnership with Premise, has developed ASSURE — Assessing Signals and SUpporting REsilience. ASSURE is a health system risk monitoring and evaluation system. The system uses digital and statistical tools to spot early warning signals of confidence losses in health systems or interventions, geolocates misinformation, and forecasts uptake rates of routine immunisation and a potential COVID-19 vaccine. Their project in Nigeria, with technical support from the Africa CDC and Africa Union, confronts potential long-term impacts of COVID-19 exacerbating loss of confidence in health systems, driven by fear, distrust, misinformation, or negative experiences.

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About COVIDaction
COVIDaction, a partnership between UKAid, UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Global Disability Innovation Hub, alongside others, is building a technology and innovation pipeline to support action related to the COVID-19 pandemic across different thematic areas. COVIDaction is managed by the Frontier Technologies Hub, which works with the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) at the intersection of tech, innovation, and international development. The Frontier Technologies Hub is managed by three partners: Results for Development, IMC Worldwide and Brink. Learn more: https://medium.com/covidaction.

About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents around the world — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — to create strong systems that support healthy, educated people. We help our partners move from knowing their goal to knowing how to reach it. We combine global expertise in health, education and nutrition with analytic rigor, practical support for decision-making and implementation and access to peer problem-solving networks. Together with our partners, we build self-sustaining systems that serve everyone and deliver lasting results. Then we share what we learn so others can achieve results for development, too. For more information, visit our website at: www.r4d.org.

Photo © USAID in Africa

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