How The Private Sector Can Empower Entrepreneurs To Improve Global Health

For health entrepreneurs and funders, successful collaboration requires a variety of ingredients that go beyond an initial monetary investment. Strong communication, alignment of objectives, and a long-term outlook are critical for any partnership to thrive. But these collaborations require something else, too—flexibility. When it comes to global health, we have long known that no single company, foundation, or organization has all the answers. In the past, the private sector, including corporate-giving programs and foundations, relied largely on cash and product donations tied to immediate health needs or interventions. Against a backdrop of a dramatically changing world, however, we must think and act differently to promote strategies for improving global health that can endure long after the initial investment. Across the world, innovators and entrepreneurs are “disrupting” traditional approaches and implementing new solutions on a local level that seek to sustainably improve health for vulnerable communities. The private sector can play an important role in accelerating these innovations and creating an environment where entrepreneurship can thrive. But doing so requires a flexible and truly collaborative approach to funding that provides growing enterprises with the autonomy to navigate the unique and fluid challenges they face. Our organizations’ partnership is an example of this. In 2016, the Pfizer Foundation and ayzh, Inc., a for-profit venture that provides ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured GrantWatch Health Professionals Africa entrepreneurs Global Health Health Care Delivery Health Philanthropy Pfizer Foundation Pharma Source Type: blogs