PRN working groups seek to bring diverse perspectives and expertise, and new analytic work, to bear on some of global health’s most pressing policy and finance problems, generating creative and practical recommendations for key policy actors.
Four PRN working groups are currently in progress:
- The What Works? Working Group seeks to identify, analyze and document implementation success stories in global health using a high standard of evidence. The working group has closely examined possible international public health "success stories," assessed the quality of evidence about them, and prepared a policy report to present their findings. These findings are featured in the CGD publication, “Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health.” (Contact Jessica Gottlieb, [email protected], for more information.)
- The Advance Market Commitment Working Group (formerly the Pull Mechanisms Working Group) examines how donors could accelerate the development of vaccines for diseases concentrated in developing countries by guaranteeing to pay for such vaccines if and when they are introduced. This kind of binding commitment could create incentives for firms to invest in R&D with the confidence that there would be a market for a successful product. The working group’s report “Making Markets for Vaccines: Ideas to Action” takes the proposal from theory to practice, with a detailed explanation of how an advance market commitment could be designed within the existing legal and budgetary framework. (Contact Jessica Wolf, [email protected], for more information.)
- The Evaluation Gap Working Group was convened to understand why there is lack of good impact evaluation, with a focus on health and education sectors, and what would be required to ensure that learning what works and what doesn't is part of the business of development. The working group has developed practical recommendations to solve this problem of the evaluation gap that are currently available in a consultation draft of the working group’s report. (Contact Jessica Gottlieb, [email protected], for more information.)
- The Global Health Resource Tracking Working Group aims to improve the information base for policymaking by developing specific recommendations for a system that would enhance the timeliness, comprehensiveness and access to information on public and private financial flows in the health sector in developing countries. Such information -- on donor agency commitments and disbursements, and national-level budgets and expenditures on health – is essential for better policy and greater accountability. (Contact Katherine Blumer, [email protected], for more information.)
Two new working groups are in development. They will address:
- Innovations in service delivery – This group will examine how use of essential health services by the poor can be increased through the use of performance-based incentives.
- Supply strategies for global health products – This group will look at key bottlenecks in the supply of essential medicines and other global health products, and make specific recommendations about how to improve the timely availability of products.