PPPP™ Partnerships Inspiration
On July 31, 2023, in anticipation for an official authorization to co-create an African patient-focused health agenda with the Pan African Parliament of the African Union, Partners for Patients NGO trademarked its value proposition, Patients-Public-Private-Parliamentarians (PPPP™) Partnerships.
PPPP™ Partnerships was also inspired by Professors Winnie Yip and Michael R. Reich Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health “A Guide to Health Reform: Eight Practical Steps August 2023 edition.”
PPPP™ Partnerships’ primary objective is to conduct collaborative research and capacity building to improve equitable and affordable access to good quality healthcare in Low-Middle Income Countries (LMICs), namely Africa.
Dr. Yip and Dr. Reich’s guide is intended to support central and state governments with an ongoing health system strengthening efforts. The key concepts and structure of their Health Reform Guide resonated with Partners for Patients NGO because the Guide looks to provide practical steps to improving performance and equity.
PPPP™ Partnerships keeps in mind, the patients, health policy makers, analysts, and other stakeholders in co-creating and co-shaping health reform efforts. Health reform for PPPP™ Partnerships is the purposeful use of policy options to effect changes that are intended to improve the performance of the health system, and as a result, help patients access diagnostics, medicines, health literary and clinical trials.
PPPP™ Partnerships also carried over Dr. Yip and Dr. Reich’s views on what is a “health system”? Their operational definition of a “health system” starts with the premise that the health system translates into the wellbeing of a population. The “means” that comprise the system is the network of institutions, people, policies, and processes that together work toward that end.
Furthermore, they define “health system performance” as performance which encompasses how well the health system achieves six separate, but related, goals.
While this framework has been successfully adopted (and adapted) for national and state health system reforms around the world and proved extremely relevant and useful to analysts and policymakers in LMICs—it has yet to include the things patients value, also known as the “voices from the people living without access to medicines” in the guide.
We have also studied and found that the people working to improve the performance of health systems in other countries around the world seemingly want to partner with others. With PPPP™ Partnerships, everyone is afforded the opportunity to participate in partnerships, which effect the most exponential growth for the private sector, accelerated policies at national levels and to boost economies, all to keep health outcomes and patients at the center of the reforms.
As a collective, we all believe that there is room for improvement in any system, including additional complimentary systematic approaches to health reform. Therefore, the more partnerships we can forge, the sooner patients can benefit from accessing health when inaccessible.
The outcomes of PPPP™ Partnerships is intended to collect ongoing public consultation that is in the public domain to share experiences. By receiving suggestions on how to improve partnerships, we are also aiming to support strengthening the performance and equity of health systems around the world through co-creating, co-shaping and collaborating, and partnering to help patients access diagnostics, medicines, health literacy and clinical trials.