This brief outlines an operational definition of the private sector in health service delivery, developed in collaboration with the WHO's Technical Advisory Group on the Governance of the Private Sector for Universal Health Coverage. The absence of a common definition was recognized as a challenge, potentially leading to an underestimation of the private health sector's impact on health systems. The private sector encompasses various subcomponents, including direct provision of health care, management of health care institutions, manufacturing of health care goods, and financing of health care. The focus of this definition is on private sector entities involved in service delivery.

The 2020 update of the landscape analysis on private sector engagement aims to facilitate improved engagement of private providers, thereby contributing to universal access to quality and affordable TB care and the end of the TB epidemic. It focuses on the role of private for-profit providers and on specific challenges and experiences in engaging them for TB prevention and care.

Dual practice, the combination of public and private practice in the same or different sites, is ubiquitous in most national health systems. Within the literature, there has been more focus on the dual practice of physicians and specialists, although nurses, midwives and other health workers also engage in the practice. The adverse consequences of dual practice for universal health care vary by context, and evidence is largely descriptive and fails to quantify and analyse its effects. Governance response also remains inherently contextual and varies by level of implementation intensity and capacity. Overall, the effects of different governance tools in response to dual practice remain unexplored in the literature. Studies do not elicit much insight into the process of policy reform in response to dual practice.

Poor access to care in low- and middle-income countries due to high costs, geographic barriers, and a shortage of trained medical staff has motivated many organizations to rethink their model of health service delivery. Many of these new models are being developed by private sector actors, including non-profits, such as non-governmental organizations, and for-profits, such as social enterprises. By partnering extensively with public sector organizations, these non-state actors have enormous potential to scale innovation in global health. Understanding how these leading organizations operate and target hard-to-reach groups may yield key insights to sustainably improve health care for all. Private Sector Entrepreneurship in Global Health includes writings by management, medicine, and social science experts who have studied trends in private sector health care innovations over the last ten years. It provides a wide range of examples from many regions and health areas and outlines tools to assess the performance of innovative private sector health programs in low- and middle-income countries. The studies reported in this volume explore new marketing and finance models, digital health innovations, and unique organizational processes emerging from the private sector to serve those most in need. Drawing on the analysis of over one thousand organizations engaged in health market innovations, this volume is a valuable resource for researchers and students in management, global health, medicine, development studies, health economics, and anthropology, as well as program managers, social impact investors, funders, and policymakers interested in understanding approaches emerging from the private sector in health care.

Although many countries already make use of private sector services to achieve policy objectives in public health care provision, it remains a controversial topic. Drawing on a wide range of country experiences, this book considers the use of the private sector in the provision of public health services in developing countries, in terms of: assessing the potential for private sector involvement, contracting with the private sector for health services, regulating the sector, and what to do when key information is not available.

The 2023 annual meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) Clinical Consortium on Healthy Ageing (CCHA) took place in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2023. It was the group’s ninth gathering. The meeting consisted of seven panels of presentation and discussion taking place across three days: 1.WHO’s new initiatives on ageing and health 2.Musculoskeletal health 3.Implementation of the ICOPE approach 4.Emerging themes to strengthen integrated care 5.Updating ICOPE care pathways 6.Multidimensional approach to research on healthy ageing 7.CCHA and GNLTC joint panel: Continuum of integrated care for older people

This report analyzes domestic provision of safe water and improved sanitation to the poor in Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania, highlighting demand and supply factors and the commercial and policy constraints that face local enterprises supplying it.