Access to health

Why it matters

One of the greatest threats to resilience in low-income and low-middle-income countries (LMIC) is a healthcare supply that falls far short of need, especially in remote areas. Most primary healthcare facilities are understaffed, and workers are often inadequately trained and monitored. Low-quality care causes even more deaths than no care at all.

For a low-income household without a financial safety net, a single illness can threaten the whole family’s health and well-being by depleting resources for basic needs like food, healthcare and education. Indeed, unplanned health expenditures push an estimated 100 million people worldwide into extreme poverty every year.

In 2015 all UN member countries committed to achieving universal health coverage by 2030, but public investment in health systems and improvements in health outcomes have been slow to materialise. In 2021 more than half the world’s population, or 4.5 billion people, weren’t fully covered by essential health services.

Project Areas:

1. Hybrid models that combine physical care (brick) to maintain human connection and trust, with digital tools (click) supporting primary care delivery through the Entrepreneurs for Resilience programme
2. Solutions that strengthen public health systems with (risk) management approaches (e.g. current focus on non-communicable diseases)

Focusing on social healthcare ventures and non-profits that target the 400 million people in LMICs in Asia, Latin America and Africa who lack access to essential healthcare services, projects in our Access to Health portfolio:

• Accelerate early-stage health ventures on the path to creating a minimum viable product. 
• Support social ventures in demonstrating their impact and commercial viability as a prerequisite for attracting investment.
• Support local social organisations in strengthening public health systems with (risk) management approaches, and inclusive insurances.
• Test different business models (eg brick-and-click service delivery, inclusive insurance) and identify key success factors for public-private partnerships in healthcare.

Targets

We support projects which aim to generate impact on these metrics:

• People with improved health resilience (eg improved health indicators, lower out-of-pocket expenses)
• Organisations with improvied resilience(eg improved financial revenues or management processes)
• Financial assets mobilized(eg additional funds or investment acquired)
• Impact evaluations conducted with independent partner
• Actionable learnings disseminated