What’s in a name?

Abstract

Tracing the evolution of health public-private partnerships (PPP) the paper argues that the partnership label covers a variety of only marginally related arrangements. While the UK health PPPs are relatively well-defined and based on a consistent if still disputed paradigm, elsewhere partnerships include highly diverse arrangements - with the so-called global PPPs having become important actors in international health policy and health financing in low-income countries. The global PPPs include members in which the private sector plays a significant role. However, the general situation is that governments and charitable foundations provide the bulk of the funding and that a large share of the research is carried out by academic institutions rather than by the private, corporate sector. The case is made for developing and using a standard protocol for future evaluations of global PPPs and for strengthening knowledge management regarding domestic, low-income country health PPPs in the shape of an international health PPP advisory service under the auspices of one of the multilateral institutions engaged in the issue.