WDI conducted a preliminary mapping of the global supply for CVD medications to develop policy recommendations for the GlobalHEARTS Initiative. Developed by the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization, the initiative works to promote research to examine the barriers affecting availability and access to CVD pharmaceuticals in low- and middle-income countries. WDI also analyzed a host of country Essential Medicines Lists for CVD medication inclusion.
WDI is studying how the availability of grants and technical assistance facilitates the efforts of health enterprises to reach scale, particularly in the provision of family planning products and services. This study tracks the performance of a subset of participants in the HANSHEP Health Enterprise Fund (HHEF). In the first year of this study, the research team identified a set of key capacities that participating health enterprises considered to be important in achieving increases in access to family planning, and how support from the HHEF helped to build these capacities. In the second year of the study, the team is seeking to better understand the economics of how family planning products and services are integrated into the enterprise’s business model. The team is also exploring other sources and types of support received by these enterprises and any gaps that remained, with the aim of improving the design of similar interventions in the future.
WDI assessed the market conditions for pregnancy tests in both public and private sectors for five selected country regions to determine whether and how access to both pregnancy tests and hormonal family planning methods could be improved. Studies suggest that making pregnancy tests more widely available can increase the same-day start of contraception for women seeking family planning services, reducing delay and client drop-off. WDI worked with Abt Associates and an in-country consultant to collect information on pregnancy test markets, such as availability price, quality perceptions and provider behavior. WDI then analyzed the findings with a USAID framework and used a consultative process to identify the most promising solutions for each country. This work provided USAID with strategic recommendations for the local conditions within each country, forming the basis for consultation and planning with USAID country mission teams.
For this Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded project WDI helped develop a framework that could be used to estimate the expected change in vaccine coverage that could be obtained as a function of the vaccine presentation chosen. While there is widespread recognition that some vaccine presentations are better suited for specific contexts than other vaccine presentations, quantifying the marginal change in vaccine coverage can be difficult given the sparsity of data. By using a supply-demand framework and surrogate markers, WDI developed a relatively simple model to produce useful data for vaccine buyers (e.g., Gavi) and sellers (R&D, manufacturers).
The William Davidson Institute (WDI) and two partner organizations have developed a new online collection of health market literature that provides immediate access to documents and related resources to increase awareness among global health workers and other stakeholders, and aid in their research and decision making.
Market Bookshelf, created by WDI, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), is a response to an unmet need in the global healthcare field – an easy-to-navigate place where health market knowledge can be aggregated and disseminated. It’s also an effort to change the paradigm and to encourage more proactive sharing of data analyses and market knowledge which have been generated as a result of donor spending.
“We’ve got a lot of new great market information, especially coming from conference presentations, and it’s always a question of how to best get it out there and make it easily accessible to the public,” according to Denise L. Harrison, senior market development advisor with USAID’s Commodities Security & Logistics Division, Office of Population & Reproductive Health.
The genesis of Market Bookshelf came from an RHSC working group collaboration, facilitated by RHSC, with an emphasis on market development and private sector involvement. This working group was an excellent example of diverse partners mobilizing collective strengths to increase access to a full range of affordable, quality reproductive health supplies in low- and middle-income countries.
“The Market Bookshelf team has spent a considerable amount of time scouring available open-access global health resources to find documents based in market concepts, interventions, analyses and more – from USAID’s Development Experience Clearinghouse to UNITAID, PSI, PATH, and ACTwatch online repositories,” said Andrea Bare, senior advisor for WDI’s Healthcare initiative. “But further expansion of the resources available on the site will be highly dependent on user-submitted reports and documents.”
The project has focused on availability of market information, which would in turn facilitate market development activities resulting in increased access to reproductive and maternal health supplies, as well as medicines and diagnostics more broadly. Market Bookshelf includes all health areas, extending beyond reproductive and maternal health supplies.
In her work with pharmaceutical and contraceptive manufacturers, Harrison heard recommendations that USAID should make market information easier to find in order to facilitate market participation. Similarly, Julia White, market development technical officer with RHSC, said: “Markets matter in global health; so it follows and that market data and knowledge matter too.”
The new knowledge platform currently features over 500 documents from more than 700 authors that are indexed by content area, health area, geography, document type, and year.
Market Bookshelf is constantly updated with new articles, reports and tools, and covers a broad range of health areas, including malaria, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, contraception, neonatal and child health, maternal health, tuberculosis & other communicable diseases, immunization and non-communicable diseases. The site ensures that project reports and findings can be accessed long after the projects themselves have closed.
Documents uploaded to Market Bookshelf are grouped into three categories to help users find specific documents:
This range of document types provides relevant resources to a range of stakeholders, implementers and researchers in the global health market community. For example, pharmaceutical or device manufacturers now have access to existing market analyses for both target and analogous product areas as they study market conditions across several countries. Country governments can review case studies for evaluating collaboration options, and implementing organizations can study market conditions as well as report on program results.
For international development workers, Market Bookshelf can advance their work and ensure its originality by providing existing market analyses, articles, presentations and toolkits developed by global health practitioners as well as publications from leading authors. Development workers can also contribute their efforts to the repository to increase their visibility.
The goal with knowledge sharing is for collaboration, not competition. Market Bookshelf is a platform that can extend the visibility and reach of project reports and other grey literature and elevate the impact of dollars dedicated to analyzing markets and support a culture of sharing across the global health community. This in turn will insure that important evidence to guide market participation is available.
RHSC, USAID and WDI look forward to collaborating with contributors and growing the collection. Users and contributors are encouraged to visit the site and reach out to to the Market Bookshelf Team at info@marketbookshelf.com.
WDI partnered with the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) and USAID to develop a large open-access collection of global health market literature, known as MarketBookShelf.com. The objective of this work was to address the need for one, easy-to-navigate online platform to facilitate the dissemination and sharing of global health knowledge. With colleagues from RHSC and USAID, WDI designed and developed the website, conducted literature searches to source content, and engaged contributors and users across the global health community. This knowledge-sharing platform will increase returns on donor and other stakeholder-funded research, and help advance global health objectives.
WDI today unveiled a new book for its 25th anniversary that commemorates the Institute’s history, leaders, partners and inspiring work around the world.
The book, “A Force for Economic and Social Freedom,” recounts the Institute’s founding and the dynamic life of its founder, Bill Davidson. The book also looks at the four people who have led WDI during its 25 years, and how each shaped the Institute in their own unique way.
Four of WDI’s initiatives – Education, Healthcare, Performance Measurement and Scaling Impact – are profiled, including the goals of each and examples of some of their successful work.
The book also reflects on WDI’s 25-year engagement with the University of Michigan community – its faculty and students. Some of the Institute’s many collaborations with U-M faculty are featured, as are the numerous global internships and MBA student teams that WDI has sponsored over the years. The uplifting stories of several past WDI interns and how the opportunity to work abroad changed their lives, also can be found in the book.
The WDI Global Impact Speaker Series is discussed in the book, as well as two specialty areas of the Institute – case publisher WDI Publishing and the news and analysis site NextBillion.
The book concludes with a look to the future, and what the next 25 years and beyond hold for WDI.
The Institute received design and editorial assistance for the book from Michigan Creative, U-M’s in-house agency. Click here to download an electronic version of the book.
Abt Associates is a mission-driven, global leader in research and program implementation in the fields of health, social and economic policy, and international development. In Uganda, Abt partnered with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to improve the availability of ORS/zinc, an effective treatment for water-borne illnesses, through private sector retail channels. The student MAP team studied the existing rural distribution network structure of competing wholesalers to gain an understanding of how the networks overlapped. This gave the team a better understanding of how the market id divided, and how to engage more effectively with these wholesalers. The team also examined the system of incentives that were in place within the wholesaler supply chain and below. This allowed them to advise Abt and CHAI how to best structure a system of performance-based, financial incentives to promote increases in supply-side capacity.
The purpose of the Malaria Taxes and Tariffs Advocacy Project (M-TAP) was to understand the role of taxes and tariffs on price and access to anti-malarial commodities and t develop an advocacy and communication strategy. The goal was to identify and minimize the direct and indirect negative impacts of taxes and tariffs on anti-malarial commodities through targeted policy reform and advocacy.
Prevention and treatment of malaria in underdeveloped countries is being pursued through multiple actions that include insecticide-treated nets, indoor residual spraying, environmental modification, anti-malarial drugs, and other interventions. These efforts, usually undertaken in contexts where product availability and cost are uncertain, are often subsidized by high income countries or philanthropic organizations that are increasingly interested in more efficient allocation of multiple interventions.
This project develops data-driven, simulation and analytical/mathematical models to analyze the system dynamics of multiple interventions, evaluate the cost effectiveness of alternative treatment and prevention strategies, and evaluate supply chain uncertainties that hamper the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions. Analyses should help to optimize decisions concerning the types and amounts of anti-malaria interventions that will have the greatest impact on people’s health.