4th Sector Health Year Five: 1st and 2nd Quarter Activity Report

Using United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding to leverage private sector funding for public health programs, the project brings partners together to work on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), malaria, maternal and child health (MCH), and reproductive health (RH). Led by Abt Associates, 4th Sector Health's two main objectives are: 1) building public-private alliances in health and 2) facilitating South-to-South exchange activities of best practices throughout the region. In its four-and-a-half years, 4th Sector Health has leveraged $3.27M in resources for USAID's public health priority areas in 12 alliance agreements, and supported 10 activities that have reached more than 38,000 beneficiaries. Engaging more than 23 companies and organizations in partnerships, 4th Sector Health has strengthened 33 local and regional institutions through its alliances. The project has demonstrated the viability and efficiency of the regional alliance model, which allows for longer-term, strategic relationships between USAID and the private sector. 4th Sector Health's experience suggests that corporate partners are convinced of the effectiveness of regional alliances. During the life of this project, the field of corporate engagement in development has evolved and continues to evolve. Alongside this evolution, 4th Sector Health has continued to refine its partnership model, focusing more on alliances that represent business interests for its corporate partners—believing that these activities have a better chance of leveraging real corporate resources and interest. The project has seen results from alliances developed by 4th Sector Health. In October 2011, heavy rains and flash floods in Central America caused widespread damage, killed 100 people – and affected water supply for 47,000 people. 4th Sector Health's alliance with P&G and Catholic Relief Services had prepositioned P&G Purifier of Water packets in vulnerable communities in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Due to the alliance's effort, communities in these countries were much more able to respond to the disaster and to prevent illness associated with unsafe drinking water. In the first half of Year Five, 4th Sector Health continued to implement the alliance activities developed by the project. The project began implementation with Profamilia in an alliance with Kimberly-Clark in Colombia, to shape the company's engagement with young mothers and their children to improve maternal and child health. Through its alliance with RedEAmérica, 4th Sector Health is influencing the organization's corporate membership through a health programming framework, resulting in corporate engagement by companies that had not previously invested in health. The project also supported a pilot project with Claro and Ericsson to utilize mobile technologies to address maternal health in Nicaragua, which is set for expansion in the next semester. 4th Sector Health celebrated the successful completion of the alliance with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), which announced the important launch and registration of a new pediatric dose of a Chagas drug in Brazil that will have regional implications. Finally, with USAID's Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Project and GBCHealth, 4th Sector Health convened a meeting at the Caribbean HIV/AIDS conference to mobilize the corporate sector on HIV work. As 4th Sector Health enters its final semester, the project is reviewing the sustainability of the alliances it has developed. The project is tracking the overall sustainability of alliance activities—for both ongoing as well as completed alliances. Throughout this report, the project comments on the degree to which individual alliances are sustainable. 4th Sector Health's exchanges component continues to advance the sharing of best practices, using online technologies and in-person visits to share experiences and innovative models in health research.