HAMED Webinar Series Topic #3 Health Provider Linkages from SEEP Network on Vimeo.

The integration of health with market development provides practitioners with a substantial range of products and services that can serve the comprehensive needs of poor households. HAMED hosted a series of webinars that served as an introduction to the various strategies that market development and health practitioners are using to simultaneously meet the health and financial needs of poor households.

Speakers Marcia Metcalfe from Freedom from Hunger, Meredith Kimball from RESULTS, and Molly Christiansen from Living Goods discussed Health Provider Linkages in this third and final webinar in the series.

Increasingly, there are more partnerships occurring between financial service providers, market development practitioners, and private and public health providers with the goal of better meeting the health needs of poor households. These truly cross-sectoral partnerships build on the strengths of their respective fields. For example, financial service providers provide specific financial products to address health needs (health savings, loans, health microinsurance, etc.) and the ability to link massive numbers of households to existing health services. Market development practitioners who facilitate micro-franchises that sell health products have the business models to increase the uptake and use of critical health products and services. Health practitioners are looking for innovative and cost-effective ways to meet the health needs of their communities. But they also innovate together, such as developing pre-paid health schemes, reducing cost services for clients, and using technology to better link rural clients to needed health care. This webinar provided a brief overview of the types of innovations being tested and the lessons from these types of cross-sectoral partnerships.

This webinar was hosted during the HAMED Working Group Meeting at the 2013 SEEP Annual Conference.

You can also access recordings of other webinars in this series: Health Microinsurance and Promoting Sustainability of Health Markets: Financing Private Health Providers in Ethiopia.