Welcome to the USAID-funded Health Policy Plus (HP+) project website.
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In a new policy brief posted in October 2021, HP+ explores important donor considerations for evaluating potential blended finance opportunities. The brief describes blended finance as the strategic use of public and philanthropic resources to mobilize private capital for development outcomes, which can be used to jump-start and advance solutions to address challenges in family planning financing. Topics covered include types of investors to target for partnership, types of blended structures, and the donor financing required to catalyze private investment. The brief also weighs the pros and cons of investing in health funds and highlights several investment opportunities with potential to expand the use of family planning and primary healthcare in low- and middle-income countries, while generating a viable market return for investors.
HP+ is exploring three new areas for implementing blended finance in family planning as the first step in developing financing models for USAID consideration. In December HP+ virtually convened 27 experts—USAID representatives, implementing partners in family planning, development finance experts, and impact investors—to explore how stakeholders can use blended finance to help expand modern contraceptive use. Three areas for opportunity came into focus: (1) market introduction/shaping and market access, (2) innovation in distribution channels and point-of-sale, and (3) new direct-to-consumer technologies. Blended finance is the strategic use of public and donor resources to mobilize private capital to achieve development outcomes, including addressing health. Such arrangements have been used to address climate change, access to clean water, and other economic development issues.
Senegal’s Ministry of Health and Social Action used HP+ supported resources to raise the visibility of and consensus around the need for domestic resources for family planning, helping lead to an increase in the government’s budget allocation to contraceptives. In 2019, HP+ worked with the MSAS and other family planning stakeholders to identify and evaluate opportunities to catalyze domestic resources for family planning, based on an HP+ framework. HP+ also led a budget advocacy training, supporting stakeholders to develop an action plan to influence the next budget cycle. In a recent news article, MSAS Cabinet Director Alphonse Ousmane Thiaw discusses a consultation on mobilizing domestic resources for family planning. He quotes a report supported by HP+ that suggested a focus on national and subnational government advocacy and strengthening support for family planning under Senegal’s Agency for Universal Health Coverage. Thiaw reaffirms the government’s commitment to financing family planning and announces an increased allocation for contraceptives in 2021. This allocation of CFA 500 million (US$926,000) aligns with the country’s FP2020 commitment, reverses the trend of decline in this allocation between 2016 (CFA 300 million) and 2019 and 2020 (CFA 117 million) and will support the annual contraceptive needs of approximately 160,000 family planning users.
Family planning stakeholders can find recommendations for how best to participate and influence the development and implementation of Global Financing Facility-financed projects in the recently published Opportunities for Financing Family Planning Through the Global Financing Facility. The report by Health Policy Plus provides 19 recommendations tailored to the stages of GFF funding: before or following the decision of country selection by the GFF Trust Fund Committee, during the development of the project appraisal document, at the start of the World Bank project implementation phase, and throughout implementation. The report also offers 15 family planning intervention ideas for stakeholders to consider. The GFF, housed at the World Bank, presents an opportunity for low- and middle-income countries to leverage additional funding for family planning. However, its grant mechanisms can be complex and the role of family planning programs within them not always clear. The report also describes how family planning has been included in GFF-funded programs and what family planning interventions are most often financed.
In Tanzania, 90% of district councils (167) have been oriented to the country’s national family planning costed implementation plan (CIP) and supported to develop action plans for inclusion in councils’ 2020/21 budget requests. In 2019, HP+ supported the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly, and Children in national dissemination of the CIP. These efforts involved supporting the facilitation of dissemination workshops to enable local government authorities to understand and buy into the plan—important steps toward increasing budget allocation for family planning at the local level.
In December, USAID, through the Health Policy Plus (HP+) project convened a special plenary at the 5th Nigeria Family Planning Conference in Abuja. The session, “Financing Family Planning in Nigeria within the Context of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund and State Health Insurance,” featured panelists from USAID and Palladium—the prime implementer of the HP+ project—and discussants from the private sector and government. Dr. Kolade Oluwatosin, director of the private-sector firm Health Systems Consult Ltd., said during the meeting, “Best practices from countries like Kenya [another HP+-supported country] have shown that insurance can be used to address issues in family planning, but stakeholders—from donors, insurance bodies, civil society organizations, and government—must come together to agree on robust benefit packages.” From the meeting, a list of recommendations was generated for how Nigeria’s government could improve access to family planning while strengthening standards of care.
Two key members of the HP+ Nigeria team, country activity manager Ed Abel and program director Onoriode Ezire, have been selected as members of Nigeria’s National RAPID Steering Committee. This high-level committee was created by the National Population Commission to guide the strategic direction for application of the RAPID model in Nigeria. RAPID is a computer model that projects the social and economic consequences of rapid population growth on a variety of sectors, and can be a powerful advocacy tool used to persuade policymakers and stakeholders to invest in family planning. Members have set their sights on a revision of Nigeria’s National Population Policy and the possible creation of a new set of RAPID projections. Once the new projections have been finalized, RAPID will be applied at the national level and in three states in Nigeria to raise awareness of the impacts of population growth and to advocate for additional national/state financial resources to support family planning programs.