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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for health supply security to efficiently respond to a pandemic. One key way to ensure supply security of life-saving medicines is through geographic diversification of the sources of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and finished pharmaceutical product (FPP) manufacturing.

For the second installment of the Market Corner blog series, Holly Lard Krueger speaks with sustainable development expert and primary care clinician Liz Willetts about the interconnectedness of our health and environmental systems, the voice missing from global policy decision-making tables, and the true cost of that lack of representation. Access February’s first installment here.

Reflections from Katie Garcia, Deputy Director of USAID’s Private Sector Engagement Hub, and Kristin O’Planick, Market Systems Team Lead in USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security. There is a growing amount of convergence between PSE and MSD. For practitioners of either approach, there is value in learning more about the tools and techniques of the other to see how they can be useful in advancing the shared goal of transformational change.

All month long, Marketlinks is spotlighting its top market-led development content from 2021.

Over the past year, donors, implementers, and other development actors have shared their technical learning, best practices, and insights with the Marketlinks community to help advance inclusive, sustained, and resilient economic growth. All month long, we’ll be spotlighting the top Marketlinks content of 2021, including blogs, resources, and webinars.

This post is the third in a three-part Market Corner series looking at health systems and why health professionals are turning to systems thinking and market systems development (MSD) approaches in their work. Access part one and part two.

This post is authored by Susan Rae Ross, Sr. Private Sector Engagement Advisor, Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Folake Olayinka, Immunization Team Leader Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Gaurav Sharma, Sr. Maternal, Newborn, Child Health Technical Advisor; and Dr. Christopher Morgan, Sr. Immunization Technical Advisor for the MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery Project.

This post is authored by Susan Rae Ross, Sr. Private Sector Engagement Advisor, Office of Maternal/Child Health and Nutrition, USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Folake Olayinka, Immunization Team Leader, Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition, USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Gaurav Sharma, Sr. Maternal, Newborn, Child Health Technical Advisor; and Dr. Christopher Morgan, Sr Immunization Technical Advisor for the MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery Project.

In early 2020, the Feed the Future Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity, funded by USAID and implemented by ACDI/VOCA, began an assessment to understand how the Activity could increase financial access for agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprises (agri-SMEs) in Bangladesh during COVID-19. The assessment originally focused on opportunities for the Activity to increase financial access through agent banks during the pandemic.

The current COVID-19 pandemic calls for innovative solutions and increased collaboration with new partners, including the private sector, to expand reach and access to all vaccines.

This post is authored by Susan Rae Ross, Sr. Private Sector Engagement Advisor, Office of Maternal/Child Health and Nutrition, USAID Global Health Bureau; Dr. Gaurav Sharma, Sr. Maternal, Newborn, Child Health Technical Advisor and Dr. Christopher Morgan, Sr Immunization Technical Advisor for the MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery Project.

By Erin Magee, Regional Advisor, Latin America & the Caribbean, USAID/Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance For Diana Arismendy Schroeder, establishing a community-centered approach is critical when working in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

Across engagement efforts in the field, we’ve seen firsthand how some private sector actors can mitigate drivers of instability and conflict by creating jobs, providing essential goods, increasing financial inclusion, developing infrastructure, advocating for peace and economic stability, and promoting other forms of inclusive economic development.

A new blog series explores the opportunities and challenges market systems development practitioners face working side-by-side with humanitarian actors in fragile and conflict-affected situations.

This post was written by Dan Hudner, Market System Resilience Measurement Lead at Mercy Corps.

In collaboration with USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, Marketlinks is exploring private sector engagement in fragile and conflict-affected settings during October.

Given that agriculture is the largest employer globally with over a billion workers, green jobs provide an avenue for agri-food systems employment that helps address food security and climate change.

Youth promoters worked with Bell Industries to help the company sell PICS bags, an innovative grain storage solution that prevents post-harvest loss, to smallholder farmers in Kenya.

As part of its work in Uganda, the USAID/Uganda Feed the Future Market System Monitoring (MSM) Activity applied a systems approach to understanding the Karamoja region, the focus of humanitarian and resilience programming in Uganda.

When Hurricane Dorian struck The Bahamas in 2019, USAID led and coordinated the U.S. Government’s disaster response efforts, deploying an elite disaster team and providing nearly $34 million in humanitarian assistance.

Third in a series of five blogs on the factors that contribute to sustaining and scaling private sector partnerships from the Enduring Results Study 3.0

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: M. Daniel Vazquez is a Senior Standards Specialist at the Center for Economics and Market Development in the Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation at USAID.

USAID is launching a new, self-paced version of its Mobilizing Finance for Development (MF4D) course on Marketlinks.

(Second in a series of five blogs about the drivers of sustainability in USAID partnerships with the private sector based on the Enduring Results Study 3.0)