Public Sector Scaling Action Lab

The Vision of the Lab is to ensure that priority population health outcomes are improved by ecosystem actors systematically collaborating to source and scale up innovations through public health systems in East Africa. To achieve this, the Lab will synthesise learning and collaboratively experiment around approaches that advance the demand for and scale-up of innovation within public health systems in East Africa. This will be done in accordance with the following shared values and beliefs:

We believe that:

• The continuous and widespread integration of different kinds of innovation – including new products / services, policies, partnership models and financing mechanisms – is essential to ensuring public health systems are able to adapt and respond to the changing context and needs of their populations, including the most marginalized;

• The scale-up of innovation should be demand-driven and aligned with national, local and regional health priorities and needs as defined by country actors;

• A wide variety of actors from different parts of the ecosystem – including government, academia, the private sector, civil society and international development partners – all play a role in supporting the resourcing, structures and processes needed for the sustainable scale-up of innovation within public health systems;

• The scale-up of innovation should wherever possible advance the interoperability and integration of healthcare services delivered by different actors, using an asset-based mindset in which locally-generated solutions and resources are prioritized and leveraged in the interests of sustainability;

• The exchange, synthesis and open sharing of learning around public sector scaling approaches among stakeholders within and across country borders is essential to ensure continuous improvement and mainstreaming of effective policies and practices.

The PSS Action Lab Champions

The PSS Action Lab has been co-designed by a range of local actors from across East Africa who are at the forefront of promoting the scale-up of health innovations through the public sector. These ‘Champions’ and their teams are recognised leaders in this space – researching, designing and/or testing new partnership models, tools and practices that are helping to fill knowledge gaps and address collaboration barriers hindering government sourcing and scale-up of solutions to meet their health system needs. All key decisions around the strategy and activities of the PSS Action Lab are collectively made by these Champions, with implementation supported by a multi-country team from Results for Development.

About the Lab

The Public Sector Scaling Action Lab (PSS Action Lab) is a new, locally-led initiative developed by Results for Development with support from Grand Challenges Canada in partnership with Global Affairs Canada. It is designed to provide a flexible platform through which country-based “champions” working to integrate health innovations within public health systems can come together to exchange learning and collaboratively advance the government scale-up of impactful solutions in East Africa.