Scott Anderson

Announcing NextBillion Health Care: The new blog focuses on private and public solutions

If you’re sick, it’s pretty hard to be productive.

Of course, for millions of low-income people, access to basic health care – let alone advanced treatments – is still very much a luxury that’s as out of reach as a shiny new car. Yet, just as we see global poverty rates declining as a result of years of financial inclusion initiatives and market-based approaches, new and hard-won innovations in health care are making their way to those living at the Base of the Pyramid.

At NextBillion, we felt these solutions did not always receive the focus they deserved on our site. Along with NextBillion Content Partner, Anavo Global LLC, we saw an opportunity to explore new thinking and action that ultimately improves people’s health, while doing so in a financially sustainable way. After numerous discussions, we also decided that creating a special place on NextBillion, dedicated solely to telling these stories, was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.

NextBillion.net has launched a new sub-blog, NextBillion Health Care, which will address the myriad challenges and solutions in delivering health care to the BoP. The blog will focus on the best practices of social enterprises, health practitioners, large health systems, NGOs and multinational players, such as drug companies, supply chain systems and technology developers. It will also focus on public policy solutions for improving health outcomes for low-income people.

Here are just a few of our main topic areas:

  • Rural health care delivery
  • Urban challenges
  • Innovative business models that improve access, affordability and sustainability
  • Public-private partnerships
  • Supply chain management and efficiency
  • Improvements in patient care, vaccinations, procedures, and billing
  • Improvements in health care insurance
  • Management practices for social enterprises, e.g. retaining strong talent, attracting investors/financing, overall tips and tactics for managing an enterprise focused on health care
  • Technology, e.g. diagnostic tools that improve health outcomes

Additionally, the site will have a news feed focused solely on health care innovations and a Twitter handle, which we welcome you to start following right away @NextBillionHC.

James Militzer, who recently joined the NextBillion Team, will be serving as the part-time editor for the new blog. James is an accomplished writer and editor, and has been immersed in the health care system as a professional translator (he’s fluent in Spanish) for several years. You also can reach James via email: jamesmil@umich.edu.

I also want to acknowledge NextBillion Health Care’s sponsoring partner, Anavo, for their support in launching this new site.

Health care is central to our lives and livelihoods. And in many cases, private innovators are competing with public systems that often have under-served patients living in the developing world. However, with NextBillion Health Care, our goal is to highlight both market-based approaches as they relate to driving change within large-scale institutions. In other words, it’s not one model versus the other, but how to bring the efficiency of markets and the scale of public systems to affect the most people.

We look forward to sharing the new site with you next week. We welcome feedback, story ideas and submissions, so please be in touch.

Categories
Education, Health Care