DEMAND-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT

The Link between Health and Economic Development

The World Health Organization, in a landmark report on macroeconomics and health, stated that improving the health of populations is “a means to achieving the other development goals relating to poverty reduction”. In the same report it further underscored the link between health and economic development, saying, “Increased investments in health…would translate into hundreds of billions of dollars per year of increased income in the low-income countries.” (Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development’, Report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs; World Health Organization 2001.)

Our Demand-Driven Development programs aim to ensure that people live healthy and, therefore, fuller, more productive lives.

What is Demand-Driven Development?

Demand-Driven Development is the recognition that to have any chance of long-term success, development efforts have to be tailored to the particular and urgent needs of the specific communities being served, as articulated by those communities.

Interventions or programs cannot, therefore, be generalized across a country’s population. They have to be responsive to local demand. A one-size-fits-all approach is doomed to failure.

Our Demand-Driven Development programs:

The Responsibilities of Governments

We believe that governments should fulfil their responsibilities to their citizens. These responsibilities include providing for their citizens’ health and well-being. These basic needs have to be provided in a manner that maximizes the value of the tax dollar. And we work with governments to enable the cost-effective delivery of basic services like healthcare and education. Services that we in the developed world take for granted. Services that are the building blocks of progress. Services that save lives and enable livelihoods.

Find out more about our unique systems approach to the social and economic development projects we undertake worldwide.

Millennium Villages Handbook
Challenges:

The design of appropriate scientific and behavioral programs in social and economic development projects requires a clear understanding of the complexity of implementation strategies. Lack of resources and staff coordination contributes to unforeseen disconnects between carefully planned out approaches and successful implementation.

Project Background:

The Millennium Villages Project is a partnership between The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme. The Project aims to demonstrate that poor and remote communities in rural sub-Saharan African can implement and manage a range of evidence-based, high-impact, integrated interventions required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Project Impact:
  • Assists Site Leaders across Millennium Villages with planning and implementation strategies in the education, health, agriculture, infrastructure, community and gender sectors
  • Supports coordination of staff, community members, government and development partners to work efficiently and effectively
  • Aids in the decentralization of development efforts from domestic sector experts to on-the-ground coordinators
  • Raises awareness for the Millennium Villages Project among the wider development community
Community Lab’s Role:
  • To develop and design the Millennium Villages Project Handbook as an interactive web-based tool that digitizes implementation methods, lessons and best practices
  • To support the creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information in a dynamic and adjustable tool that is designed to reflect knowledge developed collectively
  • To provide project management and training services to coordinate the large number of stakeholders involved

Nigeria Primary Health Systems Scale-Up
Challenges:

Despite ample economic resources and several past efforts to improve its health system, Nigeria today reports some of the most troubling health status indicators in the world. It accounts for the highest number of child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa (more than 800,000 per year), 25% of the African malaria burden, and a stubborn maternal mortality ratio (545/100,000). Meanwhile, its people face multiple barriers to care, with the obstacles most formidable for the rural poor.

Project Background:

In 2009, the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health unveiled the National Strategic Health Development Plan (NSHDP). The NSHDP is a bottom-up initiative, empowering Local Government Areas (LGAs) to design, implement, and administer the Plan. 113 LGAs (of a total of 774), including the two LGAs housing the two Nigerian Millennium Villages, will participate in the first phase of this five-year scale up.

Project Impact:
  • Provides high-quality, high-impact health interventions to all citizens in 113 LGAs, reaching 20 million people
  • Increases the strength and capacity of Nigeria’s primary health care system, to underpin sustainable improvements for the future
  • Improves outcomes related to achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 (reduce child mortality), 5 (improve maternal health), and 6 (combat communicable diseases)
Community Lab’s Role:
  • To serve as a strategic partner providing the most up-to-date research, operational guidance and key policy recommendations to address priority health challenges
  • To provide a systematic, evidence-based approach to scaling up health system interventions for all 113 LGAs