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Global health partnerships in practice: taking stock of the GAVI Alliance's new investment in health systems strengthening
Author(s) -
Naimoli Joseph F.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the international journal of health planning and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1099-1751
pISSN - 0749-6753
DOI - 10.1002/hpm.969
Subject(s) - alliance , mandate , business , stock (firearms) , corporate governance , global health , public relations , economic growth , political science , economics , finance , engineering , health care , mechanical engineering , law
Despite a burgeoning literature on global health partnerships (GHPs), there have been few studies of how GHPs, particularly those trying to build a bridge between horizontal and vertical modes of delivering essential health services, operate at global and country levels. This paper will help address this knowledge gap by describing and analyzing the GAVI Alliance's early experience with health systems strengthening (HSS) to improve immunization coverage and other maternal‐child health outcomes. To date, the strengths of HSS reside in its potential to optimize GAVI's overall investment in immunization, efforts to harmonize with other initiatives, willingness to acknowledge risk and identify mitigation strategies, engagement of diverse stakeholders, responsiveness to country needs, and effective management of an ambitious grant‐making enterprise. The challenges have been forging a common vision and approach, governance, balancing pressure to move money with incremental learning, managing partner roles and relationships, managing the “value for money” risk, and capacity building. This mid‐point stock‐taking makes recommendations for moving GAVI forward in a thoughtful manner. The findings should be of interest to other GHPs because of their larger significance. This is a story about how a successful alliance that decided to broaden its mandate has responded to the technical, organizational, and political complexities that challenge its traditional business model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.