Preparation of First Global Conference on Social Franchising

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Investigator: Dominic Montagu, DrPH
Sponsor: World Health Organization (WHO)

Location(s): Kenya

Description

From November 9-11, 2011, the Global Health Group’s Health Systems Initiative hosted the First Global Conference on Social Franchising in Mombasa, Kenya. The conference marked the first time social franchise implementers from around the world had the opportunity to meet in person, along with key government, donor, NGO and academic stakeholders. Over 160 participants attended from franchises, governments, and organizations around the world.

At a time when one of the greatest challenges for global health lies in institutionalizing health systems, social franchising has become the fastest growing private sector intervention for health in the world. The purpose of the conference was to encourage sharing among social franchise program managers to grow the community of practice and to better achieve the four goals of social franchising: quality, scale, cost-effectiveness and equity. The conference was a great success and integral to building a global community of practice, particularly at the franchise manager level. The enthusiastic feedback and energy is highly encouraging for the future of social franchise best practice-sharing, research, quality focus and service integration in particular.

A variety of outcome documents and two films will be released in early 2012.