New Project: Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS)

SHOPS website coming soon!

The Abt Associates-led SHOPS Project is a new five-year Leader with Associates Cooperative Agreement with a funding ceiling of $95 million. The mandate of this USAID-funded project is to increase the role of the private sector in the sustainable provision and use of quality family planning (FP), HIV/AIDS, and other health information, products, and services. SHOPS’ specific objectives include:

• Strengthening global support for state-of-the-art private sector models, approaches, and tools
• Advancing knowledge about the private sector provision of information, products, and services
• Strengthening key private health sector systems
• Initiating, implementing, and scaling up innovative, effective, and sustainable private sector health services and products

Who we are

SHOPS, led by Abt Associates, includes five partners—Banyan Global, Jhpiego, Marie Stopes International, the Monitor Group, and O’Hanlon Health Consulting. The partnership offers unprecedented breadth and scope of experience in private sector approaches, with a global footprint in 58 of the 62 U.S. Government health program priority countries.

To promote greater private sector involvement in improving world health, SHOPS provides technical services such as the following:

• Conducting private sector assessments
• Facilitating public-private partnerships
• Brokering pharmaceutical partnerships
• Implementing social marketing programs
• Developing and strengthening private provider networks and franchises
• Improving the quality of health care in the private sector
• Fostering private provider and client behavior change
• Strengthening NGO sustainability
• Improving private provider access to finance
• Fostering policy and regulatory change
• Conducting market analysis and other private sector research and evaluation

As the gap between public funding and the demand for FP and other health products and services widens in the developing world, both government and donors increasingly seek ways to encourage greater private sector participation to relieve resource shortages and expand access to products and services.

With a distinct focus on innovation, SHOPS builds on USAID’s decades of leadership in private sector programming and on the achievements of predecessor projects, including Private Sector Partnerships-One (PSP-One) and Banking on Health (BoH).

To access the capabilities of the SHOPS Project, USAID Missions and Bureaus can either buy into the Leader Agreement or issue their own Associate Awards.