Resource Library

Public-Private Partnerships for Public Health

In April 2000, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Global Health Council organized a small workshop outside Boston to examine questions about public-private partnerships in international public health. The workshop was just one in a series of meetings on public-private partnerships organized by many different groups around the world in recent years. This flurry of meetings has created an international dialogue on the role of partnerships in health and development initiatives, seeking to understand how to evaluate, develop, and execute public health initiatives that involve both public and private partners. This book presents the results of the workshop. The essays in this volume offer some fresh perspectives on partnerships, probe some troubling questions, and provide empirical evidence of both benefits and challenges of public-private partnerships. The participants in the meeting also achieved some progress in creating a shared vocabulary, or at least shared understanding, on points of contention, suggesting that dialogue among partisans in public health can help move debates about critical issues forward.