Arguing for a centralized coordination solution to the public-private partnership explosion in global health

Abstract

Public-private partnerships are widely seen as the future of global health; the only realistic option for achieving results in social challenges like infectious disease, because of the needed innovation, expertise and financing that a multiplicity of stakeholders can together provide. Yet, harnessing that potential requires finding a harmony among the drastically different incentive structures and internal cultures of profit-based companies, public institutions and humanitarian initiatives. While public-private partnerships have accomplished the important task of mobilizing new funding for global health, their growing dominance in governance raises questions about their effectiveness, but in particular, about the problem of accountability posed by their structure. This commentary aims to initiate a discussion around the coordination problem that exists with the employment of partnerships in global health and argues that the remedy is to apply a public goods theory approach to centralizing what is currently a fractured, inefficient, and potentially detrimental system.