The future of health markets

Excerpt

This editorial introduces a new open collection in Globalization and Health on the topic of the future of health markets. In 2012, we undertook work for the Rockefeller Foundation that sought to inform their future investments in health markets. Whereas health markets are sometimes viewed solely through the lens of private health care providers, our approach was broader, viewing such providers as one of many inter-connected actors who work within a market system [1]. We were interested in better understanding the interactions between these many actors, including public and private health care providers, payors, regulators, and civil society organizations, and the rules and regulations that govern the market. Our starting point was that poor people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) frequently depend on care from private health care providers, particularly informal private providers, and so, to expand access to high quality services for the poor, we need to think more strategically about how to influence health markets [2, 3]. …