Exploring Partnership Governance in Global Health: Proceedings of A Workshop
Exploring Partnership Governance in Global Health: Proceedings of A Workshop
Exploring Partnership Governance in Global Health: Proceedings of A Workshop
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GET THIS BOOK Rachel M. Taylor and Joe Alper, Rapporteurs; Forum on Public Private
Partnerships for Global Health and Safety; Board on Global Health; Health and
Medicine Division; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
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Exploring Partnership
Governance in
Global Health
PROCEEDINGS OF A WORKSHOP
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PLANNING COMMITTEE ON
EXPLORING PARTNERSHIP GOVERNANCE IN GLOBAL HEALTH1
1 The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s forums and roundta-
bles do not issue, review, or approve individual documents. The responsibility for this pub-
lished Proceedings of a Workshop rests with the workshop rapporteurs and the institution.
vii
viii
Consultant
JOE ALPER, Science Writer
ix
Reviewers
T
his Proceedings of a Workshop was reviewed in draft form by indi-
viduals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical exper-
tise. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid
and critical comments that will assist the National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine in making each published proceedings as
sound as possible and to ensure that it meets the institutional standards
for quality, objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the charge. The
review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the
integrity of the process.
We thank the following individuals for their review of this proceedings:
xi
xii REVIEWERS
Acknowledgments
A
number of individuals contributed to the development of this
workshop and proceedings. These include several staff members
from the Health and Medicine Division and the National Acad-
emies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Daniel Cesnalis, Sarah
Kelley, Mariam Malik, Priyanka Nalamada, Julie Pavlin, Katherine Perez,
Bettina Ritter, Rachel Taylor, and Taryn Young. The planning committee
contributed hours of service to develop and execute the agenda. Review-
ers also provided thoughtful remarks in reading the draft manuscript.
The overall successful functioning of the Forum on Public–Private
Partnerships for Global Health and Safety (PPP Forum) and its activities
depends on the generosity of its sponsors. Financial support for the PPP
Forum is provided by Anheuser-Busch InBev; Becton, Dickinson and
Company; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Catholic Health Association
of the United States; ExxonMobil; Fogarty International Center of the
National Institutes of Health; General Electric; Global Health Innovative
Technology Fund; Intel Corporation; Johnson & Johnson; Medtronic;
Merck; Novartis Foundation; PATH; PepsiCo; Procter & Gamble Co.; The
Rockefeller Foundation; Safaricom; United Nations Foundation; Univer-
sity of Notre Dame; UPS Foundation; U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Global
Affairs; U.S. Department of State; U.S. Food and Drug Administration;
and The Vitality Group.
xiii
Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 1
Organization of the Proceedings, 4
xv
xvi CONTENTS
APPENDIXES
BOX
1-1 Statement of Task, 2
FIGURES
2-1 Different types of public–private partnerships, 6
TABLES
2-1 PPP Governance Matrix: Assessing Transparency and
Accountability for a Hypothetical PPP, 8
xvii
B-1 Responses to World Café Question 1: What Are the Main Barriers
Your Organization Has Experienced When Engaging in PPPs?, 82
B-2 Responses to World Café Question 2: How Have You or
Your Organization Overcome or Managed These Barriers to
Engagement?, 83
Gates Foundation
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Gavi Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
GHIT Global Health Innovative Technology
Global Fund
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria
GPEI Global Polio Eradication Initiative
GSK GlaxoSmithKline
xix
Introduction1
S
olving the world’s health challenges requires multidisciplinary col-
laborations that bring together the talents, experiences, resources, and
ideas from multiple sectors. These collaborations in global health fre-
quently occur through public–private partnerships (PPPs) in which public
and private parties share risks, responsibilities, and decision-making pro-
cesses with the objective of collectively and more effectively addressing a
common goal, said Dr. C. D. Mote, Jr., president of the National Academy
of Engineering, in his welcome remarks at the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s workshop on Exploring Partnership
Governance in Global Health. PPPs bring together talents and experiences,
thereby enhancing the strengths, perspectives, and resources of the col-
laboration. This diversity, along with the commitment to work together,
can lead to the development of the creative and multidisciplinary solutions
required to tackle system challenges such as those in global health.
It is assumed that both government (public) and industry (private)
will be partners in a PPP; however, the range of stakeholders engaged
in global health partnerships includes entities such as national govern-
ments, bilateral development cooperation agencies, United Nations agen-
1 Theplanning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop and the Proceed-
ings of a Workshop was prepared by the workshop rapporteurs as a factual summary of
what occurred at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are
those of individual presenters and participants, and are not necessarily endorsed or verified
by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and they should not be
construed as reflecting any group consensus.
BOX 1-1
Statement of Task
The committee will develop the workshop agenda, select and invite speakers
and discussants, and moderate the discussions. Experts will be drawn from the
public and private sectors as well as academic institutions to allow for multilateral,
evidence-based discussions. A summary of the presentations and discussions
at the workshop will be prepared by a designated rapporteur in accordance with
institutional guidelines.
INTRODUCTION 3
2 The PPP Forum was launched in late 2013 with the objective to foster a collaborative
community of multisectoral health and safety leaders to leverage the strengths of multiple
sectors and disciplines to yield benefits for global health and safety. PPP Forum workshops
are an opportunity to share lessons learned and promising approaches and to discuss how
to improve future efforts in areas of global health and safety promotion that have been
prioritized by forum members.
T
he workshop opened with a presentation by Michael R. Reich from
the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on the core roles of
transparency and accountability in the governance of global health
PPPs and was followed by a panel discussion on the challenges in PPP
governance in global health. The four panelists—Steve Davis from PATH,
Mark Dybul from the Georgetown University Center for Global Health
and Quality, Muhammad Pate from Big Win Philanthropy, and Tachi
Yamada from Frazier Healthcare Partners—discussed transparency and
accountability as well as additional dimensions of PPP governance, board
structure, terminology, power dynamics and equity, and the management
of real and perceived conflicts of interest.
PUBLIC-PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS for HEALTH
I DOMESTIC I I GLOBAL I
INFORMAL FORMAL
(handshake) (written document)
ing a shared objective within the global health field. A key point here, he
said, is that PPPs involve a wide range of actors, stakeholders, and types
of partnerships, and that different types of partnerships may require dif-
ferent governance structures, processes, and practices. Partnerships, said
Reich, can be domestic or global, be informal and sealed with a handshake
or formal and finalized with a signed document, use existing structures
in a contractual joint venture or create a new special purpose entity, and
be for profit or nonprofit (see Figure 2-1). He also noted that a single PPP
can evolve from one type to another and engage different actors and
stakeholders over its lifetime.
Governance is a relatively new term, said Reich, and as such it does
not yet have a stable definition. To frame the workshop’s discussion, the
PPP Forum borrowed the definition of governance as “the art of steering
societies and organizations” from the Canadian Institute on Governance,
which admits that the complexity of governance is difficult to capture in
a simple definition.1 This is particularly true, Reich acknowledged, when
dealing with global health PPPs given the multiple partners, languages,
cultures, and expectations involved in these partnerships. He suggested
that governance of global health PPPs is less about steering a process and
more akin to herding cats.
In preparation for the workshop, the National Academies Research
Center provided Reich with a review of the literature on PPP gover-
nance. His initial impression after reading through 519 titles and abstracts
and identifying 42 that were directly relevant was that the large vol-
ume of publications contained many recommendations, but there was
little application of proposed models to real-life partnerships. He did,
however, find within the literature two commonly discussed terms—
transparency and accountability—and decided to focus on those concepts
as separate and orthogonal dimensions of designing and evaluating PPPs.
Transparency and accountability are not simple concepts, acknowl-
edged Reich. For example, a partnership might have low transparency
to the public but high accountability to a specific group or entity, he
explained. His proposed two-dimensional model does not specify how
much transparency or accountability is good or desirable. Furthermore,
these two dimensions represent only two of several possible aspects of
governance. Some might claim, for instance, that participation should be
considered as a third variable of governance, although Reich said that
he preferred to view participation as a means to achieving transparency
and accountability. Reich therefore decided to propose a simple two-
dimensional model in order to help improve conceptual clarity about PPP
governance and to provide a model that could lead to concrete options for
planning, assessing, and changing PPP governance.
Within the dimension of transparency, Reich presented three relevant
questions: who gets the information; what is the information (i.e., inputs,
processes, outputs, and outcomes); and how does information dissemi-
nation occur. Transparency is important because it allows for learning,
contributes to democracy, shapes organizational performance, and con-
tributes to a positive public perception of the PPP. It also contributes to
accountability: it is difficult to be held accountable if information on PPP
performance is not available.
For accountability, Reich noted that the literature identifies two core
elements: answerability and sanctions. His favored definition of account-
ability, from Edward Rubin (2005), is that accountability is “the ability of
one actor to demand an explanation or justification of another actor for
its actions and to reward or punish that second actor on the basis of its
performance or its explanation.” As with transparency, Reich presented
three relevant questions: to whom is the partnership accountable; what is
the partnership accountable for in terms of metrics, processes, outputs, and
outcomes; and in what way is the partnership held accountable? Account-
ability is important because it assures that a PPP is achieving its public
interest objective; changes and improves organizational performance; con-
NOTES: Contents include inputs, processes, and outputs. PPP = public–private partnership.
SOURCE: As presented by Michael R. Reich on October 26, 2017.
2 Davis defined the social sector to include philanthropic, nongovernmental, and academic
actors.
are usually well resourced to achieve that objective. The third added
dimension is adaptability.
Mark Dybul began his remarks by agreeing with Davis that the
term PPP is outdated in the current global context. From a philosophi-
cal perspective, he said, it is important to examine the 2002 M onterrey
Consensus,3 which set the path for the two largest partnerships in global
health—the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global
Fund), and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi). The Monterrey Consensus
focused on several principles: country ownership, results-based financ-
ing, accountability and transparency, and multisector involvement. Dybul
noted that the negotiations to produce the Monterrey Consensus almost
broke down over the inclusion of the private sector.
Turning to the governance of the Global Fund and Gavi, Dybul
explained that the structures established to govern them are not boards
but rather parliamentary or congressional structures. These governing
bodies exist for a number of reasons, and a primary one is to raise money.
One of the reasons that these two partnerships have succeeded is the
strong support they have received from civil society as well as from the
public and private sectors, and that support has come, at least in part,
because the parliamentary structure allows all sectors to be involved.
Yet, one downside of this structure has been around accountability and
transparency, Dybul shared. Another has been the challenges associated
with deciding on membership and voting privileges.
The Global Fund’s parliamentary body includes 10 voting seats for
implementers; 10 for external funders, including industry; and 20 alter-
nates plus nonvoting members. The number of seats for external funders
is based on the amount of money an entity provides, with industry hold-
ing one of the seats. When the governance structure was established, the
expected role of the governing body’s members was unclear. “Constitu-
encies for a long time have come strictly to represent their constituency
and vote according to their constituency and their constituencies’ desires,
rather than saying this is what our constituency thinks, but when you
vote you have to vote in the context of what is best for the organization
or structure,” said Dybul. Dybul advises newly forming PPPs to be careful
and clear about membership requirements and expectations.
The Global Fund’s voting structure has proven to be problematic
because it created two voting blocs—the funder bloc and implementer
bloc—as if they were in competition, said Dybul. He continued, “this
immediately tells people you are not trying to get to a common goal.” An
additional challenge is the provision in the governance agreement that
any four members of the funder or implementer blocs can vote no to bar
a decision. The problem, he said, is that once this voting provision was
established, it cannot be changed because the blocking minority votes
against it. Dybul explained that one consequence is that the Global Fund
is stuck with an antiquated voting structure that prevents the inclusion of
new partners. “The world has changed in 15 years,” said Dybul. “There
are big countries creating big development structures, and we cannot
bring them onto the board. If you cannot be on the board and you can-
not vote, why would you give money or engage with an institution?”
Moving from the institutional governance of the Global Fund, Dybul
emphasized that in many respects, the in-country mechanisms of a part-
nership are more important than its global structure. The country coordi-
nating mechanisms that were developed as part of the Global Fund have
not worked well in many countries because of government dominance
and difficulty engaging civil society at the country level, he suggested.
“We are still not good at the country ownership principle,” said Dybul
in his concluding remarks. “We need to focus on what is happening in
the countries as much as on what is happening in the central structures.”
Muhammad Pate joined with Dybul and Davis in suggesting that
the term PPP be retired given the preponderance of multisector partner-
ships today. Also problematic, he said, is the perception of governance in
global health as hierarchical sets of institutions. “What we have in reality
is networks of institutions and individuals with formal relationships and
informal relationships,” said Pate. Governing in the context of networks
operating in global health requires different structures than those that
govern top-down partnerships.
Complicating this operating environment are the differences in world-
views of some members of the external funding community, Pate noted.
China, for example, may have a different worldview than the United States
or Europe about country ownership. In the same way, he explained, agen-
das and values can differ, making it challenging to align interests of the
global PPPs and the countries where they are operating. “That divergence
between supranational partnerships and the way they are governed, and
the national governance arrangement . . . is a very fundamental issue that
may explain some of the disconnect that you see,” said Pate.
He emphasized that asymmetries exist in the way some governance
arrangements are configured, particularly regarding legitimacy. State and
federal governments are the legitimate authorities in their own respective
spaces; however, there may be other entities linked to global partnerships
that do not have the same legitimacy and may not be accountable at the
local level. In addition, there are asymmetries in information, finance,
and influence that should be acknowledged when structuring governance
arrangements for partnerships in global health, said Pate.
DISCUSSION
Rabinovich asked the panelists to address a governance issue that the
PPP Forum members often encounter: managing conflict of interest when
it involves industry partners. Yamada responded that in general, conflicts
are acceptable as long as they are declared. Dybul added that most other
individuals on boards have far more significant conflicts than the industry
representatives. Grantees, whether from civil society, implementing gov-
ernments, or funders, are all conflicted. He agreed with Yamada that dis-
closure and transparency are critical. Davis agreed with Dybul, and noted
that in the private sector, board members often have conflicts and they
sit on the board because they bring expertise that benefits the company.
The solution, he suggested, is to disclose and recuse on conflicted matters.
Kevin Etter from the United Parcel Service (UPS) Foundation com-
mented that in addition to retiring the phrase PPP, there is a need to
change perceptions about private-sector engagement. He has found that
there is an expectation for the private sector to change the way it engages
with the public sector and civil society but an unwillingness for the public
sector and civil society to change the way they interact with the private
companies. “Change the conversation entirely and quit talking about
private-sector engagement and start talking about public-sector engage-
ment and civil society engagement and what it is that has to change in all
sectors,” said Etter.
Sonal Mehta from Avahan and the India HIV/AIDS Alliance com-
mented that while NGOs are expected to be transparent and account-
able in a partnership, there is often little discussion about government
accountability. Yamada replied that government accountability is very
important, and one issue he has encountered is government being a pas-
T
hrough a problem-solving exercise,1 panelists in the workshop’s
second session explored legal considerations within different sec-
tors when developing global health PPPs. The problem-solving
exercise, posed by session moderator Lauren Marks from the U.S. Depart-
ment of State, was framed through a hypothetical scenario in which a
pharmaceutical company has developed a relatively new drug used to
vaccinate children and intends to donate one million doses for children
in sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with a consortium of organizations.
The partners have a shared vested interest in children’s health and a goal
of vaccinating one million children. The partners include a philanthropic
organization that makes strategic investments in children’s health, a mul-
tilateral alliance representing country governments and their ministries of
health that is the lead coordinating body for global vaccination programs,
an NGO that implements programs on the ground, and a U.S. government
agency that has an office dedicated to setting policy and providing foreign
assistance for children’s health. This office, explained Marks, happens
to provide funding to the NGO to implement programs and the under
secretary who heads the office has a seat on the board of the multilateral
alliance. After describing the scenario, Marks posed a set of related ques-
tions to the panelists—Douglas Brooks from Gilead Sciences; Anthony
Brown from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; Kenneth Miller from the Bill &
1 See
http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Global/
PublicPrivatePartnerships/8%20Oct%202017/Fact-Pattern.pdf (accessed May 16, 2018).
17
Melinda Gates Foundation; Nina Nathani from Matalon & Nathani, LLP;
and Valerie Wenderoth from the U.S. Department of State.
To begin, Marks asked the panelists how joining a PPP would differ
from being part of a joint venture, corporate deal structure, or similar
arrangement that brings parties together. Brooks responded first by not-
ing the firewall at a pharmaceutical company between its commercial
activities and its public affairs, grant-making activities, and community
engagement efforts, where this PPP would fall. Miller added that for a
foundation, all partnerships it enters would have a charitable purpose
and mission to improve the lives of the target beneficiaries, regardless of
how the arrangement is structured.
In the next phase of the scenario, Marks stated that the parties
decide to put together a memorandum of understanding (MOU) outlin-
ing their respective roles and responsibilities in the partnership. Similar
to any corporate deal, the parties start doing due diligence on each other.
The routine due diligence search reveals several potential sources of
conflicts of interest: the pharmaceutical company was recently involved
in litigation related to its business operations; the undersecretary of
the child health office at the U.S. Department of State owns stock in
the pharmaceutical company; and the president and benefactor of the
philanthropic organization is on the board of the NGO. Marks asked
the panelists to describe how they would evaluate these potential con-
flicts and weigh their relevance versus the value these entities may add
to the partnership.
At the Gates Foundation, Miller would try to weigh the risks against
the rewards of involving a conflicted party. “I think conflict of interest can
be challenging for all of us, but at the Gates Foundation, conflict is not a
binary event where there is a conflict and you cannot be involved,” said
Miller. In this scenario, the president of the philanthropy’s seat on the
NGO board could provide beneficial insight into how the NGO partner
is using the funds. On the other hand, the president would have fiduciary
responsibilities to both the foundation and NGO. If the partnership is not
achieving the desired impact or is off mission, it could be difficult for the
president to represent the interests of both the NGO and the philanthropy.
Other complications include potential confidentiality issues and repu-
tational risk for the foundation if favoritism for the NGO is perceived.
Depending on the specific goals of a PPP, one solution Miller might sug-
gest would be for the foundation president to have a role as a nonvoting
observer on the NGO board.
When the issue of conflict of interest comes up, Brown noted that
attention usually turns to the industry partner. However, he stressed
that conflicts must be evaluated for all partners. “When we think about
conflicts, we have conversations around how we manage conflicts in an
basic approach that Miller described when joining a PPP and does not
necessarily value what each partner or stakeholder brings to the table.
He did note that Gavi sometimes enters into what he calls opportunistic
partnerships that are partnerships with a commercial organization or an
NGO to achieve a specific outcome. “In those instances, we have to value
what has been provided to us,” said Brown. Gavi uses generally accepted
accounting principles and market determination. To value vaccines, for
example, Gavi uses publicly available data posted on the UNICEF web-
site. Gilead values its contributions using a set formula for calculating fair
market value, said Brooks, and it follows a policy that its contributions
will never be more than a small percentage of any organization’s budget.
Cate O’Kane, an independent consultant, commented from the audience
on the challenge of navigating as a partner versus as a procurer when the
organization is compensated for services or products. She noted, too, that
many partnerships are based on intangibles, such as expertise in a country
or government connections, rather than money. Valuing those intangibles
can be an issue for an NGO that is trying to maintain its 501(c)(3) status,
for example.
The hypothetical scenario dealt with intellectual property (IP). As
part of its contribution to the partnership, the philanthropic foundation
will fund the pharmaceutical company to adapt its drug compounds to
make them more fit for purpose in developing countries. “Who owns the
intellectual property, which in this case would be the drug compound
that has been adapted with funding from the philanthropic organi-
zation?” asked Marks. Brooks replied that his company would own
what it brought to the table, but any decision on who would own any
new formulations of products that resulted from this funding would
be negotiated. Miller responded that in negotiating IP ownership, the
Gates Foundation would need assurances that the IP is used to meet its
charitable objectives. Typically, that would mean allowing the pharma-
ceutical company to own the IP and, in return, the foundation would
expect the company to agree that it would provide access to the drug at
an affordable price in developing countries. “If we are thinking about
sustainability and engagement and how we incentivize the for-profit
world to work with us on these charitable projects, allowing them to
retain ownership of their intellectual property provides that type of
incentive and a pathway for engagement,” said Miller. He added that IP
ownership is one of the biggest “hot-button issues,” along with liability,
when negotiating partnerships.
In the hypothetical scenario, the U.S. government will provide fund-
ing through an existing, openly competed grant to the NGO to handle
supply chain distribution and programmatic implementation on the
ground. Marks asked the panelists, in this scenario, what the NGO’s role
the data are owned by the Ministry of Health, and the ministry may be
concerned that the data will reflect poorly on its programs. Other issues
arise when partners have access policies that conflict with the founda-
tion’s policy. In these cases, negotiations are needed to determine how to
comply with those different policies.
In addition to the planned donation, the hypothetical scenario
includes both the U.S. government and the multilateral alliance procur-
ing additional drugs from the pharmaceutical company to treat more chil-
dren. Marks asked the panelists to describe their views on the difference
between procurement and partnership. “When are we partnering with the
private sector, and when are we contracting for its services?” she asked.
Brown said Gavi often has several relationships with the same entity, and
the question he asks is whether the company is simply providing goods
and services or if it is making a high-level commitment to Gavi’s mission.
If it is the latter, they are a partner, and if it is the former or if there is some
sort of tender or competitive process, they are in a procurement relation-
ship with Gavi. This is a complicated process, he emphasized, because
being a partner in a PPP can give a company a competitive advantage in
a country over a company that makes a similar product but is not part
of the PPP.
Brown explained that partners agree to an MOU with aspirational
goals on how the partner will use its expertise to help the PPP achieve
its goals, while a procurement arrangement uses a formal contract with
delivery terms and prices of goods and services. There are also hybrid
arrangements that involve donated services that need to be valued. He
added that risks are allocated differently in each of these relationships
and noted that there are different individuals in Gavi who manage these
different types of relationships. Marks added that it is important when
entering into these different types of relationships to understand the
potential partners’ motivations. “Partnership does not mean all the moti-
vations have to be the same, but I think it means you have to agree on the
end goals,” said Marks. Miller added that it may be necessary to think
more holistically about governance when organizations have multiple
relationships with the same entities. Marks agreed and noted that the
U.S. Department of State has had conversations with other government
agencies about creating a standard MOU template.
Through the hypothetical scenario, the panelists were asked how the
PPP should approach liability. Nathani replied that liability can extend
to the NGO that participates in the supply chain, and the NGO should
request that a quality assurance agreement or a pharmacovigilance agree-
ment be executed with the company donating or supplying the vaccines.
“That would be an important aspect of the legal part of the MOU and
governance to ensure that those responsibilities were addressed appro-
ners, these questions can be addressed and the details worked out, but
getting these issues on the table early is critical. He added that it is impor-
tant to include provisions for a dispute resolution process in an MOU to
manage inevitable unexpected developments that can lead to conflict.
DISCUSSION
Muhammad Pate asked the panel how a PPP might address conflicts
between the partnership agreement and laws of the nations in which the
partnership will work. Brown said that most MOUs would include lan-
guage stating that each party must comply with national and local laws
regardless of where the organization is established. Wenderoth agreed
that this must be dictated in the MOU. She noted that this can create an
issue for the U.S. Department of State if it has an employee on the govern-
ing board or secretariat because that individual cannot bind the U.S. gov-
ernment to another country’s laws. She said that if the U.S. Department
of State oversaw procurement, for example, it would follow U.S. federal
rules on procurement while ensuring that it is not overtly violating an
in-country regulation.
Justin Koester from Medtronic commented that a manufacturer may
be incentivized to join a PPP if the PPP itself has the potential to create
a market where one does not exist. Wenderoth responded with concern
that these PPPs may not be a place where the U.S. Department of State
should get involved. Miller responded that in these situations, the foun-
dation ensures that its funds are used to further charitable purposes and
not create a profit motive for a commercial enterprise. Gavi, as well as the
Global Fund, recognize that they often create market opportunities for a
company, and they have a framework to evaluate these scenarios. Miller
noted that innovative companies seeking market opportunities can play
an important role in helping Gavi find solutions to difficult problems with
the potential to create a winning situation for everyone.
Cate O’Kane pointed out that giving a company first-in-market status
can also mean that company was first to raise its hand and be ready to act.
It may be possible, then, to structure an agreement that allows competi-
tors to join the partnership or provide products later. Wenderoth replied
that this was a new insight for her and gives her a new way to think
about participating in a partnership if it provides a mechanism that would
allow similarly situated private-sector entities to join later. Brooks com-
mented that his company often learns of new ways to address problems or
improve the way it does its business by participating in PPPs. He added
that as someone who worked in government before joining industry, he
believes there is a role for the U.S. government in creating opportunities
to solve difficult problems in public health.
Jeffrey L. Sturchio from Rabin Martin noted that the United States
has the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent U.S. foreign
aid agency, as well as USAID, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency,
and others that have been shaping markets in developing economies for
decades. The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, through
its contributions to the Global Fund and the establishment of the Partner-
ship for Supply Chain Management, has been instrumental in creating
one of the largest markets in Africa and other parts of the developing
world for antiretroviral medicines. The key to each of these mechanisms
is that the partners disclose their interests, that there is transparency, and
that the partnerships create a fair opportunity for companies to partici-
pate and benefit. “Creating those markets actually does help to accom-
plish the good that many of these partnerships are set up to do, so I do
not see those as in conflict,” said Sturchio. “It is just a question of using
these principles to manage issues of transparency, accountability, and
impact.”
Brenda Colatrella from Merck noted that risk and risk management
are important components of managing conflicts of interest. When work-
ing with lawyers to structure partnerships, she has perceived a desire
to manage to zero risk. Miller said that the Gates Foundation does not
manage to zero risk because that would severely affect its ability to have
an impact, so it tries to be solution focused. “In some cases there may be
a high degree of risk, but the potential reward and impact on our target
beneficiaries is such that it is worth taking that risk,” said Miller. He said
he does not see his role as managing to zero risk but instead as finding
solutions. Nathani said her role is not to manage to zero risk but to make
sure everyone understands the potential risks so they can make informed
decisions about costs and benefits.
Responding to a question about whether it would be possible to
develop a gold standard agreement or framework that could guide PPPs,
Miller replied that there can be best practices and lessons learned, but
each partnership is unique in terms of the nature of the participants, geog-
raphies, and goals. As a final comment, Brooks said the critical question to
ask is what is the purpose of the PPP. In his opinion, staying focused on
the partnership’s central purpose can help mitigate the other challenges.
I
n the workshop’s fourth session, five panelists shared lessons learned
from development and operations of PPPs and their governance struc-
tures. The panelists—Danielle R ollmann from Pfizer, Lauren Marks
from the U.S. Department of State, BT Slingsby from the Global Health
Innovative Technology Fund, Jeffrey L. Sturchio from Rabin Martin, and
Sonal Mehta from Alliance India—discussed lessons learned from experi-
ences in determining governance needs and mechanisms based on part-
nership goals and engaging partners and other stakeholders in decision
making. In addition, the panelists delved into the creation of iterative pro-
cesses for continuously improving governance and how they approached
adjusting to the evolving priorities of PPP partners and the global health
environment. Table 4-1, included at the end of the chapter, provides an
overview of the five partnerships included in this session. The text in this
chapter summarizes the experiences and lessons learned shared by the
panelists. Following the panel presentations, Clarion Johnson moderated
an open discussion with the workshop participants.
27
One of the hardest steps the partnership had to take in its early meet-
ings, said Marks, was naming the initiative; crafting an acronym that
conveys a sense of hope and positive thinking while taking political sen-
sitivities into account was a challenge. Then, the partners had to develop
a logo. The private-sector partners were able to bring their expertise in
branding and marketing to facilitate the naming and logo development
process. The partners then had many discussions about the governance
structure, particularly on membership, how to add new members, and
how much of a financial commitment would be needed for a new member
to have a seat at the table. The partners discussed whether there should
be a partnership director and if the secretariat should have its own leader-
ship, governance structure, or staff; where it would be housed; and what
its role should be. The partners also established working groups, which
Marks said were similar to those of AA, and developed provisions for
decision making, dispute resolution, and responsibilities. One challenge
was accommodating the U.S. government’s role as the largest funder and
its veto power over how the partnership spent its funds. The partnership
wanted some flexibility in its governance structure so it would be able to
adapt to changing circumstances and add new partners and subcompo-
nents. She noted that the partners had to agree on what success looked
like so the partnership could have the proper metrics in place to measure
success.
During the development phase, DREAMS held workshops in each of
the 10 countries where it had initially worked to listen to the beneficiaries’
vision of what the program should provide. That engagement led the
partners to take a proactive approach to identify partners who could pro-
vide unique value. Marks explained that this effort included a landscape
analysis of current related initiatives.
AFRICAN COMPREHENSIVE
HIV/AIDS PARTNERSHIPS (ACHAP)
When ACHAP3 was established in 2000, some two-thirds of HIV-
positive individuals lived in Africa, and very few had access to treatment.
Jeffrey L. Sturchio, who was involved in ACHAP’s development and now
serves on its board, noted that in Botswana, HIV/AIDS had become an
existential crisis. Life expectancy, which reached almost 70 years of age in
the 1990s, had plummeted to the low 30s.
At the time, Uganda had been experiencing success in addressing
its HIV/AIDS epidemic using a prevention strategy, but no initiative
had tried to deal with the entire spectrum of prevention, treatment, and
care and build a health system infrastructure to manage the epidemic in
a country like Botswana. ACHAP was founded to test whether it was
possible to tackle HIV/AIDS on that scale and to ascertain if involving
the private sector to help organize and manage projects would increase
the impact. Merck & Co., Inc., began looking for partners in this effort,
and the government of Botswana and the Bill & Melinda Gates Founda-
tion joined Merck and the Merck Company Foundation to create ACHAP.
Structured as an NGO in Botswana, the board included two members
from the Gates Foundation, two from Merck, and an independent expert
well known to key stakeholders in Botswana.
ACHAP’s goal, said Sturchio, was to address the threat of the epi-
demic through an integrated, country-led approach to prevention, treat-
ment, and care. During its first few years, the drop in life expectancy
reversed through the partnership’s support of a broad-based national
treatment program.4 An important element for success was the president
of Botswana’s strong public support for the country’s efforts to control
the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This was exemplified by his direct involvement
in establishing routine testing for HIV throughout the country. “It helped
individuals feel more comfortable about getting a test and then becoming
eligible for and enrolling in treatment,” said Sturchio. He added that the
opt-out testing procedure that Botswana pioneered was soon adopted
by the World Health Organization, Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention as the worldwide standard for HIV/AIDS testing.
One of the lessons learned from ACHAP is the critical importance of
political will and commitment that was evident in Botswana by the presi-
3 For additional background on the origins and early years of ACHAP, see Distlerath et
handle/10665/43065/9241592400.pdf;jsessionid=3382DEDC60C338C50F221DF6CB3BDE64?
sequence=1 (accessed April 4, 2018).
dent leading the charge. At the same time, said Sturchio, it was important
for the Gates Foundation and Merck to realize that they were working in a
different organizational and national culture, which had a critical impact
on the partnership. Country ownership was also fundamental, he said, as
ACHAP was integrated into national strategies and priorities. Building
local capacity and engaging effected communities were also key elements
of the strategy. ACHAP’s governance structure included clearly identified
objectives, roles, and responsibilities, as well as an effective mechanism
for communicating among stakeholders and agreed-upon metrics. Among
the key metrics, said Sturchio, were the number of individuals treated and
the mortality rate.
To promote alignment, transparency, and accountability, ACHAP
worked closely with the National AIDS Coordinating Agency, partici-
pated in the national forum of development partners, and established the
Madikwe Forum5 for the ACHAP board and permanent secretaries of all
government departments involved in the AIDS response to meet regularly
to identify and work through bottlenecks. The permanent secretaries
would assign specific ministries to tackle those bottlenecks and report
back at the next meeting of the forum.
The ACHAP board, said Sturchio, had its own processes for ensuring
that the two funding partners were able to work closely with management
on critical issues. In addition, an international advisory group provided
information and counsel about the global response and what was work-
ing elsewhere on preventing and treating HIV/AIDS. The ACHAP board
also decided to invest in monitoring, evaluation, and dissemination of the
results with partners and other audiences.
From ACHAP’s inception, the founding members were concerned
about sustainability, but it was not a primary issue in the board’s planning
in its early years, as the focus was on coping with a crisis situation. In
time, however, there was discussion and planning to move from dealing
solely with HIV/AIDS to a broader emphasis on population health in the
country. The resulting sustainability plan involved building on ACHAP’s
core capabilities in program management and implementation and on
diversifying sponsors. The formal partnership ended in 2014 (although
Merck continued to donate its antiretroviral medicines to Botswana until
2016), but ACHAP still operates in Botswana. It has worked with PEPFAR
and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has also
become the first private-sector principal recipient of the Global Fund in
5 Formore information on the Madikwe Forum, see George, G., C. Reardon, J. Gunthorp, T.
Moeti, I. Chingombe, L. Busang, and G. Musuka. 2012. The Madikwe Forum: A comprehen-
sive partnership for supporting governance of Botswana’s HIV and AIDS response. African
Journal of AIDS Research 11(1):27–35.
Botswana. ACHAP is also working with the World Bank and has begun
a project with 10 members of the Southern African Development Com-
munity on various health challenges, such as tuberculosis among mine
workers.
Regarding ACHAP’s impact, Botswana went from having the highest
adult prevalence of HIV infection to becoming the first country to achieve
universal antiretroviral therapy coverage and the first African country to
reach UNAIDS’s 90-90-90 targets.6 Life expectancy had rebounded to 66
years of age by 2015, and adult HIV prevalence had fallen from nearly 40
percent to 22.2 percent in 2015. ACHAP also supported Botswana’s intro-
duction of universal coverage for prevention of mother-to-child transmis-
sion, which cut the percentage of HIV-positive infants from 40 percent
to under 4 percent. With ACHAP’s collaboration and financial support,
Botswana also built a national network of HIV clinics; developed national
counseling and testing infrastructure and services; developed a cadre of
physicians, nurses, and community health workers to build the national
response; implemented and scaled up safe voluntary male circumci-
sion and behavior change programs for prevention; and developed local
capacity to address TB/HIV co-infection. The important factors that led
to these successes, said Sturchio, were that ACHAP focused on alignment
with government and all partners, on being adaptable as circumstances
changed, on learning by doing, and on being willing to change priorities if
it became clear that an activity was not going to have the desired impact.
“We have to realize that partnerships like this are a process, not just
an event,” said Sturchio in concluding his remarks. “When you create it,
that is just the beginning. As ACHAP’s experience clearly shows, a focus
on adaptability and learning is really critical to long-term success.” He
noted that while today’s ACHAP looks nothing like ACHAP in 2000, it
continues to make an important contribution both to progress against the
HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana and, more broadly now, to population
health in southern Africa.
6 By 2020, 90 percent of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status. By 2020,
90 percent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral
therapy. By 2020, 90 percent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral
suppression (http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2017/90-90-90 [accessed
January 29, 2018]).
DISCUSSION
Clarion Johnson opened the discussion with a question for the panel-
ists: When they began putting their programs together, did they decide at
what point they would consider their efforts a failure and stop their pro-
grams? Mehta replied that her program had a few small failures. Early on,
the program came to a point where the Gates Foundation was not happy
with Avahan’s formation of community-based organizations (CBOs). “We
had decided that if they really take a stand, ‘no CBO formation, only HIV
control,’ then we would withdraw from the program,” she said. Marks
said that the DREAMS partnership set a 2-year deadline for reducing HIV
incidence by 40 percent, with the 2-year window ending in December
2017. Sturchio said that while ACHAP was having “tremendous success”
with treatment, HIV incidence was not declining at the desired rate, par-
ticularly among young people. As a result, ACHAP started focusing on
prevention and behavior change, using insights from social marketing,
behavioral economics, and learning from previous work on health promo-
tion and prevention.
Scott Ratzan from the Anheuser-Busch InBev Foundation noted that
many of the programs discussed over the course of the day focused on
infectious diseases and, for the most part, delivering effective treatments.
He asked the panelists if there were lessons to learn from their efforts
that could be applied when there is not an easy product, such as a drug
or vaccine, available as the answer to the global health challenge being
addressed. Marks replied that a multidisciplinary approach, one that
engages doctors, engineers, anthropologists, and representatives of a vari-
ety of industries, will enable lessons from these programs to be applied
to public health to change behavior and bring a focus on wellness and
prevention to PPPs. “I think it is going to take some creativity and doing
things differently and not talking to the same public health people, but
really looking outside of our usual orbits,” said Marks.
Rollmann remarked that industry alone will not be able to drive solu-
tions, which is why AA is engaging with the World Bank and NGOs. She
said that she and her colleagues have heard from individuals they work
with that the demand for efforts on noncommunicable diseases is increas-
ing, and they are looking for the right partners to advance this conversa-
tion. As far as forming new partnerships to address noncommunicable
diseases, Sturchio said that governments need to be more proactive about
approaches that use existing instruments and tools, including laws and
regulations, to engage more systematically with the private sector. He
suggested that if there are more individuals who can work comfortably
across sectors, who know how to translate what government thinks into
the way that private industry and civil society think, and vice versa, prog-
ress could be facilitated.
Regina Rabinovich asked the panelists if any of them had established
mechanisms for dealing with disagreements among partners. Sturchio
answered that the Madikwe Forum was established in part for that pur-
pose. While there were not many disputes, the forum proved to be an
effective mechanism for addressing and resolving disputes by having
the right people around the table and a clear process for identifying the
issue, fact-finding, brainstorming for potential solutions, and following
up on implementation. Marks shared an example of how data served to
solve a disagreement. The U.S. Department of State was adamant that it
wanted the DREAMS program to work with adolescent girls ages 15 to 24,
but one partner wanted to work with younger girls. The solution was to
commission some research that showed the importance of working with
younger girls, and so the U.S. Department of State changed its policy and
DREAMS now reaches those younger girls. Slingsby said that formally,
GHIT addresses disagreements through the committees, the board, the
selection committee, or the council. However, there have not been many
disagreements, and in his opinion soft diplomacy within the organization
to align partners behind closed doors is the key.
Robert Bollinger from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medi-
cine asked the panelists how they define sustainability or scale. Mehta
said that in India, most states have transitioned successfully from Avahan
support to government support. Her concern, though, is that technical
knowledge can be lost during such transitions.
Jo Ivey Boufford then asked if any programs had been supportive of
or resistant to transitioning from a disease-specific program to using the
same infrastructure for broader care. Sturchio said that when ACHAP
facilitated and financially supported building a network of clinics, the
clinics were initially intended to serve as infectious disease control centers
but ultimately served as an investment in building health care infrastruc-
ture for delivering a range of primary care interventions. He also noted
that when the newly elected president of Botswana had different priori-
ties, ACHAP adapted to that reality and discovered that its capabilities
in program design and implementation were transferable to other areas
and to countries outside of Botswana. Moreover, those capabilities were
sought out by new funders, and ACHAP is now a major implementer
of the work on voluntary male circumcision that PEPFAR has been sup-
porting in Botswana, and it is working with the Global Fund in other
countries.
Rollmann said that one of the goals of AA’s pilots with the World
Bank was to explore how existing infrastructure can be used for addi-
tional purposes. She noted that building a health system infrastructure
continued
Innovation Challenge:
http://www.
dreamspartnership.
org/innovation-
challenge/#innovation
(accessed April 16, 2018)
continued
http://www.thelancet.
com/journals/langlo/
article/PIIS2214-
109X(13)70055-X/abstract
(2013) (accessed April 16,
2018)
http://www.nature.com/
nm/journal/v19/n12/
full/nm1213-1553.html
(2013) (accessed April 16,
2018)
continued
https://docs.
gatesfoundation.org/
documents/avahan_
hivprevention.pdf (2008)
(accessed April 16, 2018)
continued
a The original ACHAP partnership ended in 2014. Today, ACHAP operates as an indepen-
dent entity with a broader health mandate and wider geographical focus while continuing
to build on and leverage its core competencies in the field of HIV/AIDS and related health
conditions. Its goal is to provide comprehensive, innovative, and catalytic solutions through
Public Private Community Partnerships (PPCPs) to achieve sustainable population health.
More information can be found at http://www.achap.org/index.php (accessed May 25,
2018).
SOURCES: Information in table was compiled from speakers Lauren Marks, Sonal Mehta,
Danielle Rollmann, BT Slingsby, and Jeffrey L. Sturchio, and distributed at the workshop as
preparatory material for their respective sessions.
http://digitalcommons.
law.yale.edu/
cgi/viewcontent.
cgi?article=1080&context=
yjhple (2004)
T
he workshop’s fifth session presented an initiative to develop a
framework to standardize measurement and reporting across
private-sector initiatives to improve access to noncommunicable
disease treatment and care. The presentation by Peter Rockers and
Veronika Wirtz from B oston University focused on the decision-making
process for the framework’s design and how it is being applied. Following
the presentation, the workshop participants engaged in a discussion with
the presenters, moderated by John Monahan from Georgetown University.
Rockers began the presentation with a comment about the prolif-
eration of PPPs in recent years and the worry that they may not have
achieved their desired impacts. In his opinion, this is where measurement
can benefit global health PPPs. “There is the opportunity that measure-
ment provides to identify those programs that do have the greatest impact
and start to invest more in them,” he said.
The framework that he and Wirtz presented was developed as part of
their work with the AA initiative that Danielle Rollmann described in the
previous workshop session. Rockers reminded the workshop that AA had
many partners involved in multiple programs taking place at the same
time. The framework’s unit of analysis focuses on the level of the indi-
vidual programs. In addition to developing the measurement framework,
Rockers and Wirtz’s role in AA includes three other primary aspects: cre-
ating the Access Observatory reporting system, building capacity among
the partners for measurement, and supporting the project to help specific
programs with measurement.
51
Rockers said that just as it was important for the partners to be trans-
parent about their principles, so too was it important at the beginning of
their engagement with the project to clearly articulate their principles as
academics and independent evaluators. These principles included being
transparent as partners, which manifested itself as building a system that
would be fully transparent in terms of the information and data that the
partners collect and report on as well as being transparent in their rela-
tionship with AA. Toward the latter, the Boston University team put its
master service agreement that they signed as independent evaluators onto
their website for every partner to see.
A second principle was the need to be flexible while maintain-
ing consistency. Flexibility was important, said Rockers, because of the
heterogeneity across the different programs operating under the AA
umbrella. At the same time, the framework had to be consistent to
enable synthesis across the programs. The third principle was to be
practical while maintaining rigor. Any framework, said Rockers, is only
as valuable as its usefulness in the field, but at the same time, the Boston
University team was committed to bringing rigor to measurement and
assessment activities.
The framework that Rockers, Wirtz, and their collaborators developed
has three main components. The first is a taxonomy of 11 strategies to
develop a simplified approach to categorizing the hundreds of different
programs in AA. The 11 strategies within the framework’s taxonomy are
community awareness and linkage to care, health service strengthening,
health service delivery, supply chain, financing, regulation, manufactur-
ing, product development research, licensing agreements, pricing scheme,
and medicine donation. Rockers noted that many programs use multiple
strategies. A logic model for each strategy laid out the pathways through
which program activities aimed to achieve the intended outcomes and
impacts, and each concept in each logic model had a corresponding indi-
cator with a clear definition. These indicators enabled the partners, pro-
gram designers, and implementers to collect and report standardized
data.
The Access Observatory mentioned earlier is a public website that
complements the framework and fulfills the Boston University team’s
transparency principle, said Rockers. It houses AA program descrip-
tions, collected data, and the methodologies for the data collection. He
noted that everyone will be able to access all of the information the part-
ners are collecting on these programs to compare and synthesize across
programs. From his and Wirtz’s perspective, the Access Observatory
will be the vehicle for generating a body of evidence across the various
strategies and programs to determine which ones are working best and
which ones are not meeting their goals and to start to move the entire
final point was that measurement requires commitment from the global
health community. Achieving better measurements, she said, requires
public investments, and the return on those investments would be trans-
parency, accountability, and shared learning.
DISCUSSION
John Monahan asked Wirtz and Rockers about how many people they
and their colleagues had to speak with to develop the shared language
and how they knew when they had succeeded in developing it. Wirtz
said she could not identify exactly how many people the Boston Univer-
sity team spoke with, but she noted that they spoke with representatives
from all 23 corporate partners, the World Bank, UICC, and the metrics
groups. Developing the language was an iterative process, and even now,
that process continues. An important part of the process, she said, was to
document these discussions and iterations. Rockers added that the public
health literature also contributed to the development of the common lan-
guage, and the team is now immersed in the business literature to further
develop the shared language.
Rollmann, who is engaged in the metrics efforts of AA, remarked that
one of the requests of the Boston University team was to develop a frame-
work to measure the aggregate results of diverse programs. She noted
that there are a range of companies within the AA initiative, and while
one company may have questioned Boston University about the need for
measurement of social aims, there are o thers that design programs with
social aims in mind and regularly publish results. That difference, she
said, stems from the companies’ diversity of experience. The companies
vary in both size and level of experience in designing and implement-
ing programs that support health system strengthening to advance non
communicable disease care and treatment.
Brenda Colatrella asked Rockers and Wirtz to further describe the
debate about practicality versus rigor and who makes the ultimate decision
about what is practical. Rockers replied that the point about practicality
versus rigor is one that comes up in every conversation he and his col-
leagues have with the corporate partners. From his perspective, learning
what is practical is a process and is not self-evident. The hope is that the
process of instituting measurements within the corporate partners will
evolve over time regarding the capacities that can be built and the resources
that can be made available. While his expectations are modest, he believes
that companies will report on the scope of program activities to start, with
a few instances of more rigorous evaluation. “The companies that are at the
point where they are ready to invest in that kind of evaluation are the ones
T
he objectives of the workshop’s final session were to identify the key
issues in the governance of global health partnerships and apply
what has been learned to decision making in the establishment of
new partnerships. To achieve those objectives, session moderator Cate
O’Kane guided the workshop participants through a role-playing exercise
to apply lessons learned from the workshop and identify key messages.
In this role-playing exercise, participants in groups of six took on iden-
tities reflecting six key organizations working together to form a new
partnership and were guided through a process of collectively develop-
ing a governance structure for the partnership. At the end of the exercise,
participants shared some reflections.
Brenda Colatrella said her group was able to reach a consensus to put
the responsibility for leading the partnership in the hands of the partner
they felt was best positioned to do it. Kenneth Miller said his group had
more hard than easy decisions, in part because the focus of the partner-
ship in the exercise was outside the group members’ areas of expertise. A
workshop participant said that managing opposing views from outside
the partnership was challenging. Another participant noted that there
was some conflict over how quickly the partnership needed to make its
decisions about governance, with some members being more impatient
than others. A second participant in the same group said there was some
question about why the NGO representative was feeling so urgent and
whether it had to do with a near-term financial need. O’Kane said that
seemed like a trust issue.
57
CLOSING REMARKS
Clarion Johnson and Regina Rabinovich began the closing workshop
discussion by sharing their key takeaways from the workshop. Johnson
said he had developed a newfound appreciation for restraint with regard
to when to use various governance mechanisms. Rabinovich was taken
by the need to spend time getting the governance structure right from the
start. She wondered if those within the global health community could
lay out the questions that a governance structure needs to answer as a
guide for groups starting new partnerships. Her second takeaway was
that the structure matters, and it is important to understand the rami-
fications of choosing a specific structure. Her third key lesson was that
conflicts of interest are common in all sectors, not just the private sector,
and that there are effective approaches for managing conflicts. She won-
dered if the Forum on Public–Private Partnerships for Global Health and
Safety could better characterize and understand the many approaches
available for resolving conflicts of interest in public–private partnerships.
Rabinovich was also struck by the idea of the ethical dimension of gover-
nance and expressed interest in exploring that idea further.
Jo Ivey Boufford was surprised by the power of the preexisting stereo
types each sector has of one another and by the ubiquity of conflict of
interest outside of the private sector. She also observed that language
chosen to describe governance may present a challenge to the public
health community, a comment that Robert Bollinger seconded. She
noted that the language used in the public administration literature is
much clearer than the literature coming out of public health or business.
Bollinger provided the final comment, which was that it troubled him
how difficult it remains to put together these partnerships and how easy
it is to exclude key players and miss opportunities for progress.
Appendix A
Commissioned Paper:
The Core Roles of Transparency and
Accountability in the Governance
of Global Health PPPs
By Michael R. Reich
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
(Email: [email protected])
O
ver the past two decades, the field of public–private partnerships
(PPPs) in health has expanded enormously, both in the number
of such organizations and in the study of this phenomenon. This
growth reflects rising societal expectations about what partnerships can
and should do to contribute to social welfare. The National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Forum on Public–Private Partner-
ships for Global Health and Safety (PPP Forum) reflects this growth in
interest in PPPs and has contributed to better understanding what these
organizations do and how they contribute to society. Within this sphere,
the question of “governance” of PPPs remains an important topic for
additional analysis and discussion.
This paper was prepared as background for the National Academies
workshop to examine “the evolution and trends in the governance of
global health PPPs,” and provide “reflections on significant issues and
current challenges with these governance structures, processes, and prac-
tices.”1 The PPP Forum staff suggested that I draw on my own work
in considering the trends and challenges for PPP governance. Over the
past two decades, I have had multiple engagements with PPPs in public
59
Some observers criticize this definition as being too simple. Steering sug-
gests that governance is a straightforward process, akin to a steersman in
a boat. These critics assert that governance is neither simple nor neat—by
nature it may be messy, tentative, unpredictable, and fluid. Governance
is complicated by the fact that it involves multiple actors, not a single
helmsman.
61
APPENDIX A 63
lessons from 11 partnership assessments, but did not specify a model for
PPP governance and focused exclusively on the role of boards.13 (One con-
clusion of this study was that many PPP boards were designed to allow
the participation of multiple constituencies, which reduced the ability to
function as accountability mechanisms; to assure representation of many
stakeholders, board meetings included 40 to 50 people, making it difficult to
have in-depth discussions and resolve complex problems.) These reflections
on PPP governance led me to think about an alternative approach focused
on the concepts of transparency and accountability.
Following this initial review, the National Academies research center
conducted a more detailed literature scan on partnership governance of
three databases (OVID, Scopus, and Web of Science) for materials pub-
lished since 2000.14 The search included the terms partnerships and global
health and transparency, accountability, and governance in various combi-
nations. The search also examined the publications of 14 global health
organizations. The search produced a total of 519 titles and abstracts. A
review of these 519 summaries found 42 that were directly relevant, 268
that were of some relevance, and 209 that were not appropriate. (The full
search document of 166 pages is available from the author.)c
It is worth noting that the broader literature on “governance of health
systems” has also grown significantly in recent years. A systematic review
of “frameworks to assess health systems governance” between 1994 and
2016 found 16 different frameworks in the literature.15 The frameworks
were based on various theoretical approaches in new institutional eco-
nomics, political science, public management, and development. But this
review also found that only 5 of the 16 frameworks have been applied.
The authors concluded that the existing frameworks need to be tested
and validated in order to understand “which frameworks work well in
which settings.” They also emphasized that “health system governance
is complex and difficult to assess” and that “[t]here is no single, agreed
framework that can serve all purposes.”15
Based on this situation, it seemed to me that it would be more use-
ful to focus on a higher-level model for PPP governance in hopes that it
could be applied. I have adopted that approach in this paper. My goal
was to create a model of governance that could simplify the complex chal-
lenges of PPP governance, and that could be applied by implementers and
analysts involved in the design, assessment, and revision of how actual
partnerships work in practice.
APPENDIX A 65
TRANSPARENCY
Transparency fundamentally involves questions of contents and rela-
tionships: What information is available to whom? In addition, transpar-
ency involves questions about the quality of the information and the
mechanisms for making the information available.
Let’s start with the relationship aspect of transparency. This addresses
the question of who has access to information from the partnership. The
receivers of information can include the core founding partners, non-
founding and noncore partners, stakeholders who are not partners (such
as beneficiaries), government agencies (including contracting agencies
and regulatory agencies), relevant actors in the public health field, donor
agencies, academics, and the general public. Depending on national law,
partnerships can be required to make certain information available to
specific government agencies and to the general public. For example, in
the United States, partnerships that register as nonprofit and tax-exempt
charitable organizations (as a 501(c)(3) organization) are required to file a
financial report (Form 990) with the Internal Revenue Service each year,
thereby providing information to the U.S. government. In addition, these
organizations are required to make the annual Form 990 available for
inspection to the general public during business hours (and many place
the forms on their website for free download). National law and govern-
ment policy (including memoranda of understanding with a PPP) can
thus specify which information is to be made available to whom.
Most informational relationships are decided at the discretion of the
APPENDIX A 67
Another possibility is that raw data are provided, but in ways that are
either not easily understood by people who are not technical analysts or
not able to be readily analyzed. The presentation of data thus can shape
whether the information is intelligible to different audiences.
The final consideration is mechanisms for assuring transparency. Four
general types of mechanisms to promote access to information (and trans-
parency) exist18: (1) access through public dissemination, where informa-
tion is provided by the organization in publications or on websites, or
made available in public reading rooms; (2) access by request, either as
required by law (or lawsuit) or by discretionary decision of the organiza-
tion; (3) access through meetings, including public hearings or advisory
meetings or closed meetings; and (4) access through informal means, such
as whistleblowers or leaks when confidential documents are provided
to individuals, government agencies, other groups, or the press, gener-
ally in order to focus attention on mismanagement, corruption, or other
purposes.
Other mechanisms for access to information also exist. For example,
the funders of an organization (or the founding partners of a PPP) can
require the reporting of certain information to the funders and the found-
ers and of other information to the public as a condition of receiving
financial support. Members of the board of directors may have exceptional
access to internal information through regular meetings; these members
can include the core partners, noncore partners, and others, depending on
how broadly board representation is decided by the partnership. Finally,
peer-reviewed publications and evaluations can result in public access to
information, including full and original data sets for analysis.
It is worth noting several reasons why we care about transparency
for PPPs. First, transparency contributes to learning. Transparency allows
others the opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes and advances
knowledge about how to improve the role of PPPs in global health. Through
access to information about inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes,
others can learn about what works, how efficient different approaches
are, the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different strategies and
structures, and many other aspects of partnership performance. Access to
information is a necessary but not sufficient condition for learning.
Second, transparency contributes to democracy. Because PPPs are
intended to fulfill public interests, one can argue that the public has a
right to know (in a democratic society) about what these organizations are
doing and how they are operating. Laws on the right to know, however,
usually apply to government agencies and public records. When PPPs
take on public-sector functions, the contracts can include confidentiality
clauses that limit access to information within the partnership organiza-
APPENDIX A 69
tion.22 These restrictions can limit public information and public delibera-
tion about the specific PPP and its activities.
Third, access to information can contribute to accountability, as dis-
cussed below in more detail. But transparency (and access to information)
does not necessarily result in action to hold a partnership accountable. An
organization can provide partial or altered information to shape percep-
tions of what it is doing, or it can provide an overwhelming amount of
information in ways that obstruct accountability. In addition, action does
not always follow access to information.
Fourth, transparency can shape organizational performance. If a
partnership is required to report on certain metrics (such as number of
patients treated), then the PPP could tend to seek to produce to that met-
ric. There may be financial incentives and reputational benefits to report
(and to act) in ways that show positive trends in information disclosed.
Finally, transparency can contribute to public perceptions of a part-
nership. Decisions about transparency shape the positive and negative
information and images that exist in the public sphere about a partner-
ship. PPPs may decide not to disclose information that could be viewed
as harmful or negative, as part of their public relations strategies, or they
may use positive information to boost the partnership’s public image and
reputation. In addition, PPPs may use their transparency policies to high-
light the organization’s adherence to ethical standards for partnerships.
In conclusion, PPPs shape the transparency they provide by deciding
how to use different access-to-information mechanisms to channel certain
kinds and quality of information to different audiences. Partnerships tend
to have large latitude in deciding what information is provided to whom,
the quality of that information, and how it is provided, depending on
the nation where the partnership is registered and the legal requirements
for such organizations in that country (which sets the minimal rules for
transparency). The legal requirements will also vary, however, depend-
ing on whether the PPP is registered as a formal organization, the kind of
organization, and the national laws related to that organizational form.f
It should also be noted, however, that transparency for a PPP has costs
(in terms of preparing and releasing information to different actors and
audience) and also can have risks (since releasing information can result
in consequences that may negatively affect the partnership). The com-
plexity of transparency in practice (as described above) also complicates
the challenges of measuring the degree of transparency for a particular
organization. It may therefore be more appropriate to think about trans-
parency with regard to a particular actor, rather than trying to create an
aggregate measure across diverse audiences.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability, as with transparency, is a contested concept with mul-
tiple definitions. I find the definition provided by Edward Rubin to be
useful, as it captures many common elements of the concept23:
an elected official must answer to his constituents for his actions. A real-
istic, contemporary consideration of elections suggests that this relation-
ship to accountability, although not entirely absent, is a relatively minor
aspect of the electoral process.
(One need only glance at the current state of public affairs in Washington,
DC, to understand the limitations of elections as accountability mechanisms.)
Rubin also argues that accountability can only be exercised in a hier-
archical relationship between superior and subordinate (which I do not
agree with, especially for partnerships), and according to concrete stan-
dards (which I do agree with).23 Rubin concludes by saying that his goal
is not to solve the problem of administrative accountability but “simply to
indicate that holding someone accountable is a complex, technical task.” 23
This process of “holding accountable” is further complicated in PPPs by
the challenges of trying to hold a partner accountable—a problem that
may not have been anticipated when the partnership began. In addition,
holding someone or a partner accountable is more than a technical task,
since it involves questions of values (e.g., which targets are selected for
assessing performance) and power (e.g., how actors are pressured to com-
ply). In short, accountability involves ethics and politics as well as tech-
nical challenges. For example, accountability may be exercised through
specific sanctions for nonperformance related to an agreed-upon metric,
but it may also occur through public criticism and conflict that damage
a PPP’s reputation and thereby negatively affect the partnership’s ability
to operate.
What does this mean for PPPs in global health? Let’s consider
APPENDIX A 71
In their paper, Kamya et al. evaluate the Gavi partnership for human pap-
illomavirus (HPV) applications in Uganda and find that the lack of clear
guidelines about roles, responsibilities, and terms of references probably
reduced efficiency in operations. They conclude, “[t]he existence of many
capable partners does not ensure clear expectations and management of
activities and processes.”24 In short, in this case, it was not clear who was
accountable to whom, and this ambiguity created confusion.
The next question is: Accountable for what? Here it is useful to refer
back to the four categories of information discussed above for transpar-
ency: inputs (resources that go into a program or organization), processes
(activities undertaken by the program or organization, including how
decisions and plans are made), outputs (what is produced by the activities),
and outcomes (the ultimate performance goals or benefits produced by the
program or organization). These categories relate to the concepts typically
used in logic models for evaluation.25 As part of assuring accountability,
a partnership could have specific metrics or procedures specified as per-
formance targets for these four categories. Different stakeholders could
have different interests and capacities for different kinds of targets, and
they may seek to hold the partnership accountable for different kinds of
performance metrics. Outsiders, for example, may be keenly concerned
with processes used in partnerships, since it can allow them to participate
and have voice in decision making, and thereby influence decisions and
performance on results. Insiders may focus on staff performance metrics
for deciding on both sanctions and incentives, and thereby influence part-
nership production of both outputs and outcomes. Insiders, for example,
could use “management by objectives” and “key performance indicators”
to hold executives or groups or projects responsible for specific targets,
with sanctions and rewards depending on performance.
Holding a partnership accountable for final outcomes (such as
changes in health status, client satisfaction, or financial risk protection)21
often involves complex questions of assessing causation. To what extent
can partnership actions be causally associated with a specific outcome,
and how can you know?26 A rigorous study to evaluate how a partner-
ship’s actions affect outcomes often entails high costs and can still have
high uncertainty, due to multiple factors that affect outcomes (beyond
the specific intervention) and that are not under the partnership’s con-
trol. An evaluation of 120 pharmaceutical industry-led access-to-medicine
initiatives (all listed on the International Federation of Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers & Associations [IFPMA] Health Partnerships Directory)
found, despite frequent claims of positive impacts, only 47 evaluation
studies, and all except three were of low or very low quality.26 Uncertainty
in causal attribution requires careful study design and interpretation of
analytical results. Whether to hold a partnership accountable for specific
outcomes, and if so, which ones, therefore, represent complex questions.
The third aspect for accountability is: How? What mechanisms can be
used to implement PPP accountability for different stakeholders? Many
accountability mechanisms exist that can be (and are) applied to partner-
ships. Boards of directors (representing different perspectives) review
performance assessments of partnership executives and decide on both
incentives (such as financial bonuses) and sanctions (such as firing and
demotions). Core partners may decide to increase their financial commit-
ments to a PPP, reduce their funding, or even exit a partnership, based
on changes in key performance indicators. National regulatory authorities
may require partnerships to submit annual financial reports to allow the
APPENDIX A 73
NOTES: Contents for Transparency includes inputs, processes, and outputs; Contents for
Accountability includes inputs, processes, and outputs; for Mechanisms for Transparency
and Accountability, see discussion above.
APPENDIX A 75
on inputs, processes, and outputs), and the mechanisms for making this
information available are then entered (annual reports on a website, s imple
written reports physically distributed, or distribution of detailed opera-
tional and financial reports at a closed board meeting). These descriptions
then allow a judgment about the level of transparency provided for each
relationship (high or low).
The analyst then conducts a similar assessment for accountability.
The analyst selects a relationship between the PPP and some party B
(such as the general public, beneficiaries, or core partners). The con-
tents of accountability are then described according to (1) the kind of
standards used in the accountability relationships (few or many proce-
dural or substantive standards) and (2) the mechanisms for assuring that
the performance standards are met by the organization (accountability
through public information on a webpage, accountability through reports
provided to beneficiaries, or accountability through performance reviews
of key PPP staff, followed by sanctions or rewards depending on per-
formance). These descriptions then allow a judgment about the level of
accountability provided for each relationship (high or low).
This governance matrix leaves many questions unanswered. The
metrics by which each dimension is measured need to be defined. There
are operational questions about how to collect the information for the
matrix, on both transparency and accountability, and judgment ques-
tions about how to assess levels as high or low. Some of these questions
can be addressed through repeated practice and use of the tool by actual
partnerships. Also, the levels of transparency and accountability may
change over time as the partnership evolves. This reflects the need to
monitor the implementation process and to assess gaps between expected
performance in transparency and accountability and actual performance.
Finally, the matrix may be applicable to other kinds of PPPs (those outside
of global health) and to other organizations (beyond partnerships, such as
public agencies, academic institutions, and private entities).
This approach to transparency and accountability can also be used
for normative evaluation (that is, setting specific performance targets),
but that raises process implications. What is the desirable level of trans-
parency and accountability for a PPP, and for which audiences, within
a particular country? Who should set those levels, and how? In short,
who sets the normative rules for PPPs? We could, for example, consider
a set of “minimal” standards of governance of PPPs, or even provide a
scale of standards from bronze- to silver- to gold-level governance (as
one reviewer suggested). This question returns us to broader normative
issues about the governance of PPPs, to assure that these organizations
are meeting the social goals and public interests that they are intended
to pursue.
APPENDIX A 77
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this proposal for a simplified model offers a number
of suggestions about how to think about the governance of PPPs, with a
focus on transparency and accountability. I present the proposal in the
spirit of seeking to move the discussion forward, clarify some of the key
concepts, and indicate ways to apply the ideas in practice. I hope that the
proposal will help improve thinking and action about the governance of
PPPs in global health.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper is based on the keynote address prepared for the Forum
on Public–Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety: E xploring
Partnership Governance in Global Health—A Workshop, October 26,
2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,
Washington, DC.
The paper benefited from several discussions with Peter Rockers and
Veronika Wirtz, and from comments on earlier drafts by Michael Goroff,
Anya L. Guyer, Cate O’Kane, and Rachel Taylor, from participants at a
seminar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and from com-
ments received from participants at the National Academies workshop.
NOTES
a. The “five characteristics of high-performing PPPs,” according to the report, are
(1) adopt overall strategy and role, (2) leverage the power of the private sector,
(3) nurture partnerships with government, (4) invest in knowledge, and (5) plan for
sustainability. For further information on what these characteristics mean and how
they were derived from the analysis of a single case study, see ref. 10.
b. This article on global health partnerships identifies seven “unhealthy habits,” although
the authors do not explain the methods they used to reach these conclusions. They
state: “We argue that GHPs [Global Health Partnerships] skew national priorities of
recipient countries by imposing those of donor partners; deprive specific stakeholders
a voice in decision-making; demonstrate inadequate use of critical governance proce-
dures; fail to compare the costs and benefits of public versus private approaches; fail
to be sufficiently resourced to implement activities and pay for alliance costs; waste
resources through inadequate use of country systems and poor harmonisation; and
do not adequately manage human resources for partnering approaches.” See ref. 11
for additional details.
c. While I did not conduct a systematic analysis of the titles retrieved, the literature scan
was very helpful in identifying some key publications related to PPP governance, and
I have used them in writing this paper and included them as references.
d. I decided not to include “participation” as a separate dimension of PPP governance
because it seemed to me to be a key component of both transparency and account-
ability (through the relational nature of both concepts), because it seemed to be a
mechanism to achieve transparency and accountability more than a separate dimen-
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Appendix B
D
uring the workshop, the participants engaged in a World Café dis-
cussion at their tables during which they answered two questions:
81
TABLE B-1 Responses to World Café Question 1: What Are the Main Barriers Your Organization Has
Experienced When Engaging in PPPs?
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6
Failure to Alignment Identifying the Lack of Alignment: defined Assumptions;
document vision, of expectations; champions: skill metrics/agreed purpose of PPP private-sector
mission, intent definition and sets and expertise; performance mistrust; speaking
measure of retention of the same language;
success; leadership relationships power dynamics
differences;
adaptability
People: Risk: political, Lacking the right Lack of Measure Lack of trust:
champions and financial, indicators to management and evaluate difference in
host lost; capacity reputation, legal measure success of capabilities comparative value- ideology
the partnership added of PPP
Understanding Local ownership: Alignment of Lack of mutual Transaction costs Strategy seen as
the business and exit strategy and interests: evolution understanding luxury versus
players sustainability and redefinition in motivations, necessity
Exploring Partnership Governance in Global Health: Proceedings of a Workshop
assumptions,
purpose, and
language
NOTES: This table shows examples of responses from individual participants and should not be construed as reflecting group consensus. PPP
= public–private partnership.
TABLE B-2 Responses to World Café Question 2: How Have You or Your Organization Overcome or
Managed These Barriers to Engagement?
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6
Invest time up Document Institutionalize Use metrics to Plan with candor Invest time up
front on common everything partnership with manage front to discuss
purpose buy-in from goals, roles, and
leadership and responsibilities
staff
Define the end Involve local Be open to Reminder of Passion, initiative, Experience success
game ownership from rethinking roles; agreed purpose; efficiency and be honest in
beginning; be leave room for declare prejudices; failure
Exploring Partnership Governance in Global Health: Proceedings of a Workshop
Appendix C
85
She served two 4-year terms as the Foreign Secretary of the National
Academy of Medicine between 2010 and 2014 and was elected to mem-
bership for the National Academy of Public Administration in 2015. She
received Honorary Doctorate of Science degrees from the State University
of New York, Brooklyn (1992), New York Medical College (2007), Pace
University (2011), and Toledo University (2012). She has been a Fellow of
The New York Academy of Medicine since 1988 and a Trustee since 2004.
Dr. Boufford attended Wellesley College for 2 years and received her B.A.
(Psychology) magna cum laude from the University of Michigan˝ and her
M.D., with distinction, from the University of Michigan Medical School.
She is board-certified in pediatrics.
Anthony Brown, J.D., M.B.A., is Senior Legal Counsel with Gavi, the
Vaccine Alliance. Since joining Gavi in 2005, Mr. Brown has been instru-
mental in a number of corporate initiatives, including the setup and
continued operation of two major multistakeholder financing schemes,
the International Finance Facility for Immunisation and the Advance
Market Commitment for Pneumococcal Vaccine to provide long-term
APPENDIX C 87
Steve Davis, J.D., M.A., president and CEO of PATH, combines extensive
experience as a technology business leader, global health advocate, and
social innovator to accelerate great ideas and bring lifesaving solutions
to scale. Prior to joining PATH in 2012, he served as director of Social
Innovation at McKinsey & Company, CEO of internet pioneer and global
digital media firm Corbis, and interim director of the Infectious Disease
Research Institute. He also practiced law at the international law firm
K&L Gates. Earlier, he worked extensively on refugee programs and poli-
cies, as well as Chinese politics and law. Mr. Davis is a lecturer on social
innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He currently is
a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the boards of
InterAction and Challenge Seattle, and sits on several advisory groups,
including as a trustee of the World Economic Forum’s Global Health
Challenge, on the stakeholder advisory panel for the global insurance and
asset management firm AXA, and on the advisory board for Medtronics
Labs. Mr. Davis earned his B.A. from Princeton University, his M.A. in
Chinese studies from the University of Washington, and his law degree
from Columbia University. He also studied at Beijing University.
public health for more than 25 years as a clinician, scientist, teacher, and
administrator, and most recently as the Executive Director of the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. After graduating from
Georgetown Medical School in Washington DC, Dr. Dybul joined the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as a research fellow
under director Dr. Anthony Fauci, where he conducted basic and clini-
cal studies on HIV virology, immunology, and treatment optimization,
including the first randomized controlled trial with combination anti
retroviral therapy in Africa. Dr. Dybul was one of the founding architects
in the formation of The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,
better known as PEPFAR. After serving as Chief Medical Officer and
Assistant, Deputy, and Acting Director, he was appointed as its leader
in 2006, becoming the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, with the rank of
Ambassador at the level of an Assistant Secretary of State. He served until
early 2009. Dr. Dybul has written extensively in scientific and policy litera-
ture and has received several Honorary Degrees and awards, including a
Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa, from Georgetown University.
Kevin Etter, who has worked for more than three decades with UPS
(United Parcel Service), is an internationally recognized thought leader
in the field of logistics and supply chain service innovation. A few of
his accomplishments to date include large aircraft fleet acquisition and
integration projects; development of new services built through focus-
ing on strategic mergers and acquisition activities; new service ideas and
innovation for the pharmaceutical, medical device, and health products
supply chain and security; and new ways of thinking about corporate
social responsibility. Mr. Etter is a strong voice and advocate in the world
of community service and corporate philanthropy, active both at home,
in Europe, and at UPS. A recent partnership for the UPS Foundation
had him seconded (executive on loan) to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in
Geneva, Switzerland. There, Mr. Etter played a key role in advising,
consulting, and developing solutions supporting Gavi’s Supply Chain
Strategy. Mr. Etter pioneered innovative models for public–private part-
nerships with Gavi, United Nations organizations, and other international
nongovernmental organizations. Mr. Etter has recently presented a TED
Talk titled “I am the Donation” that features his work with Gavi and
highlights the opportunity that business communities have in moving
beyond checkbook philanthropy to impact real change in our world today.
APPENDIX C 89
Kenneth Miller, J.D., is Associate General Counsel at the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, where he provides legal advice to the foundation’s
Global Health Division to help structure and negotiate agreements for
innovative charitable investments, including grants, contracts, and
program-related investments to develop and deliver vaccines, drugs,
and diagnostics to people most in need. Before joining the foundation
in 2015, Mr. Miller was a partner in the technology transactions group
at Perkins Coie LLP, an international law firm based in Seattle, where he
represented leading-edge technology companies in complex intellectual
property and commercial transactions.
APPENDIX C 91
and on the boards of the Lever Fund and the U.S. Committee for Refugees
and Immigrants. Mr. Monahan holds bachelor’s and law degrees cum
laude from Georgetown University.
Nina Nathani, J.D., is a founding partner of Matalon & Nathani, LLP. She
has devoted nearly 20 years of her career to providing legal advice and
counsel to nonprofit organizations of all sizes who work across different
sectors and with support from a variety of U.S. and foreign donors, both
public and private. Her expertise extends to traditional nonprofit gover-
nance, operations, and compliance matters, including establishment of
nonprofit corporations, applications for tax-exempt status, corporate gov-
ernance and ethics, grants and contracts, fundraising (including charitable
solicitations), gift acceptance policies, procurement of goods and services,
intellectual property, commercial leases and other agreements, lobbying,
and employment and consultancy agreements. She also has significant
expertise in advising global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on
matters particular to their overseas operations, including establishing
APPENDIX C 93
branch offices, working with local NGOs, and monitoring and evaluation
of subrecipients and subcontractors, as well as the formation, governance,
and management of collaborative arrangements among NGOs, commer-
cial companies, and governmental and multilateral institutions, with a
focus on public–private partnerships. Her early legal career included
several years working as an associate at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer &
Feld LLP and Steptoe & Johnson LLP and as an Attorney Advisor in the
USAID Office of General Counsel.
Cate O’Kane knows that partnerships can make change happen, be that
in Europe, Asia, Africa, or her current base in the United States. With an
innate curiosity about people and culture, she has successfully led multi-
disciplinary and multinational teams and developed an understanding of
the finer nuances of partnership. As founder of partnership consultancy
&co, Ms. O’Kane now develops strategic partnerships that ensure success
for all parties involved, be that a multinational company, a government
agency, or a nonprofit implementer. Previously, Ms. O’Kane was Direc-
tor of Corporate Partnerships & Philanthropy at PSI in Washington, DC,
where she led the development of philanthropic, social responsibility,
and shared value partnerships, integrating the worlds of purpose and
profit to deliver win-win opportunities. During her tenure at PSI, corpo-
rate partnerships quadrupled in number, and revenue from partnerships
grew 600 percent. She emphasized the value of partnerships to provide
not only financial investment at a country level but also as a means of
knowledge sharing and individual capacity development through fellow-
ships and joint thought leadership. Prior to her time at PSI’s headquarters,
Ms. O’Kane was the Technical Services Director at PSI/Botswana where
she led the platform’s marketing, communications, and research pro-
grams across a multitude of HIV/AIDS interventions. In building part-
nerships across sectors from defense to health to communications, she
produced the first Botswana edutainment television series Morwalela,
featuring the lives of Batswana living with HIV, and developed a camou-
flage condom in partnership with the Botswana Defense Force. She spent
her time before PSI working in Europe and Asia for 16 years in advertis-
ing and communications roles. Her last role in industry was as Director
of J. Walter Thompson’s North East Asia team, based in Shanghai and
working to expand market share for companies in this dynamic region.
She is a member of the Devex Strategic Advisory Council, working across
sectors to encourage stronger partnership practices, and was a founding
member of the INGO collective within FSG’s Shared Value Initiative.
She has spoken on the development, role, and management of partner-
ships for impact at USAID, FSG, Devex, SOCAP (Social Capital Markets),
United Nations Global Compact, and PYXERA Global events.
APPENDIX C 95
I llinois University and a Master’s of Public Health degree from the Uni-
versity of North Carolina.
BT Slingsby, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., is the founding CEO and Executive Direc-
tor of the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund). The
GHIT Fund is a public–private partnership in Japan between the govern-
ment of Japan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Health, Labour
and Welfare); 16 life science companies (Astellas, Chugai, Daiichi Sankyo,
Eisai, Fujifilm, GlaxoSmithKline, J ohnson & Johnson, Kyowa Hakko Kirin,
Merck, M itsubishi Tanabe, Nipro, Otsuka, S hionogi, S
umitomo Dainippon,
Sysmex, and Takeda), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Wellcome
Trust; and the United Nations Development Programme. Launched in April
2013 with a commitment of more than $100 million, GHIT has grown to
manage more than $350 million with a portfolio of more than 50 invest-
ments in the research and development of novel Japanese innovations for
global health. The combination of Japan’s government and its pharmaceuti-
cal industry—the second largest in the world—brings a powerful engine
of knowledge and innovation to the development of medications for the
developing world. Prior to the GHIT Fund, he was global head for access
and strategy for the developing world at Eisai Co. & Ltd. Dr. Slingsby is
adjunct professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine and the
University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine and has published more
than 50 peer-reviewed articles in English and Japanese in journals including
Journal of General Internal Medicine, Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet.
He graduated from Brown University, earned his Masters and Doctorate
from Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo, and received his Medi-
cal Doctorate from The George Washington University.
APPENDIX C 97
Essential Medicines for Universal Health Coverage in Fall 2016. She has
worked as a technical advisor for various international organizations,
among them the World Health Organization; the Pan American Health
Organization; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria;
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Alliance for Health Systems
and Policy Research. She is a Visiting Professor of the National Institute of
Public Health (INSP), Mexico, where she was a faculty member between
2005 and 2012. She received her training as a pharmacist from Albert-
Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany, and her Master in Clinical
Pharmacy and Ph.D. from the University of London, United Kingdom.
Appendix D
Workshop Agenda
AGENDA
T
he Forum on Public–Private Partnerships for Global Health and
Safety (PPP Forum) fosters a collaborative community of multi
sectoral leaders from business, government, foundations, humani-
tarian and professional organizations, academia, and civil society to
leverage the strengths of multiple sectors and disciplines to yield ben-
efits for global health and safety. The PPP Forum is premised on the
understanding that partnerships among these stakeholders can facilitate
dialogue and knowledge exchange; utilize technological and process effi-
ciencies; promote innovation; and synergistically advance humanitarian,
international development, and global health interests. The U.S. National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provide a neutral
evidence-based platform through which the PPP Forum is convened.
This public workshop on partnership governance in global health
has been planned by an ad hoc expert committee. The intended audience
is the PPP Forum members and the organizations they represent, other
public and private entities that have participated in or are considering
collaboration across sectors to further global health and safety, and aca-
demics and researchers across multiple disciplines who are focused on
understanding the value proposition and impact of various models of
public–private partnerships to improve global health.
99
Workshop Objectives:
• Examine what role governance assumes in public–private part-
nerships for global health and how governance impacts the effec-
tiveness of these partnerships in improving health outcomes.
• Consider the range of stakeholders and sectors engaged in
global health partnerships and how specific organizational attri-
butes impact a partnership’s governance and decision-making
processes.
• Explore best practices, common challenges, and lessons learned
in the varying approaches to partnership governance.
• Illuminate the key issues in the governance of public–private
partnerships for global health with the goal of increasing their
effectiveness in improving health outcomes.
Workshop Context:
Definitions of governance are varied and depend on factors such as
the relevant actors, level of analysis, and existing political and social con-
texts. Broadly, governance is conceived of as the “art of steering societies
and organizations” (IOG). Within the context of PPPs, governance refers
to the structures, processes, and practices for decision making and for
ultimately accomplishing the goal of the partnership. Governance defines
the power structure of a PPP by regulating who makes decisions and
how and when the decisions are made, as well as how other stakeholders
are represented in the process. Effective governance mechanisms can be
a tool for providing direction and monitoring performance, promoting
accountability and transparency, enhancing legitimacy and ownership,
and managing both real and perceived conflicts of interest.
The governance of a partnership impacts its efficiency and effec-
tiveness in meeting its stated goal: strong governance can improve the
performance of PPPs while weak governance can undermine it. In global
health, PPPs have played a critical role in addressing global health needs;
however, they require careful steering to avoid potential pitfalls (Reich,
2002). An examination of PPPs in global health has revealed some com-
mon shortcomings in their governance, including weakness in or absence
of strategic direction, accountability mechanisms, monitoring and evalu-
ation systems, and risk management; lack of clarity in roles and responsi-
bilities; confusion between the roles of management versus governance;
and inadequate attention to resource mobilization and to the human
resources required to deliver programs and achieve objectives (Bezanson
and Isenman, 2012).
While the importance of governance in global health partnerships has
been identified, there is, in general, a lack of agreement on best practices
APPENDIX D 101
8:00am Registration
8:30am Welcome
C. D. MOTE, JR.
President
National Academy of Engineering
8:35am
Introduction to the Workshop from the Planning
Committee Co-Chairs
CLARION JOHNSON
Private Consultant
ExxonMobil
REGINA RABINOVICH
ExxonMobil Malaria Scholar in Residence
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
APPENDIX D 103
Panel Discussion
STEVE DAVIS
President and CEO
PATH
MARK DYBUL
Professor of Medicine and Faculty Director
Georgetown University Center for Global Health and Quality
MUHAMMAD PATE
CEO
Big Win Philanthropy
TACHI YAMADA
Venture Partner
Frazier Healthcare Partners
10:15am BREAK
DOUGLAS BROOKS
Senior Director for Community Engagement
Gilead Sciences
ANTHONY BROWN
Senior Legal Counsel
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
KENNETH MILLER
Associate General Counsel
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
NINA NATHANI
Partner
Matalon & Nathani, LLP
VALERIE WENDEROTH
Attorney-Advisor
U.S. Department of State
12:00pm LUNCH
APPENDIX D 105
KEVIN ETTER
Director
UPS Loaned Executive Program
Access Accelerated
DANIELLE ROLLMANN
Access Priorities, Global Policy
Pfizer Inc.
3:30pm BREAK
APPENDIX D 107
VERONIKA WIRTZ
Associate Professor, Global Health
Boston University
Appendix E
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Ebrahim, A., J. Battilana, and J. Mair. 2014. The governance of social enterprises: Mission
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Hilts, P. 2005. Changing minds: Botswana beats back AIDS. In Rx for Survival: Why We Must Rise
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