Galvanizing strategic public-private engagement – the first of four webinars

SHOPS Plus launched its end-of-project webinar series, Accelerating Private Sector Engagement, with a discussion on stewardship. The event highlighted the project’s experience in stewarding the private sector in Senegal, Tanzania, and India. It attracted over 650 registrations with more than 250 participating live.

The webinar series opened with a welcome from Elaine Menotti, deputy division chief and health science specialist at USAID, and a project overview from Susan Mitchell, SHOPS Plus project director, Abt Associates.

Nelson Gitonga, SHOPS Plus public-private partnership advisor, Insight Health Advisors, set the stage by explaining that stewardship refers to the public sector’s systems, mechanisms, and ability to steer both public and private actors in the health system together to achieve a desired public health outcome. Three country examples followed, each illustrating ways to improve stewardship functions.

Marianne El-Khoury, SHOPS Plus research, monitoring and evaluation lead, presented the example from Senegal, which focused on the importance of gathering data and how information and strong country ownership paved the way for better stewardship. Nicole Kapesi, SHOPS Plus senior program officer in Tanzania described activities in that country, also looking at data, focusing on family planning markets. The project worked at the national level to support the improvement of the regulatory environment and the subnational level to broker partnerships with private providers. Komal Khanna, the project’s chief of party in India, described amplifying the private sector voice through the Condom Alliance, a group of condom manufacturers who collaborated to expand the condom market.

The stewardship webinar was the first in a four-part series reflecting on global investments and field programs with USAID Missions. The webinars highlight achievements and lessons learned since 2015. They cover broad thematic areas that affect access to health services through the private sector: stewardship, financing, and health markets. The final webinar looks at the project’s results, their implications, and what the future holds.