Engaging The Private Sector And Developing Partnerships To Advance Health And The Sustainable Development Goals

In September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the United Nations Development Summit to serve as a 15-year plan of action for all countries and people. The SDGs include 17 specific goals, and 169 associated targets that set out quantitative objectives across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, all to be achieved by 2030. Health has been recognized as crucial for sustainable human development and an essential contributor to the economic growth of society. Beyond the goal to "ensure healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages," many of the other SDGs include targets that are essential to address the environmental and social determinants of health. Considering this context, the Forum on Publicâ€"Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety convened a workshop series to examine potential opportunities to engage the private sector and develop partnerships to advance health and the SDGs. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop series.

In September 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the United Nations Development Summit to serve as a 15-year plan of action for all countries and people. The SDGs include 17 specific goals, and 169 associated targets that set out quantitative objectives across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, all to be achieved by 2030. Health has been recognized as crucial for sustainable human development and an essential contributor to the economic growth of society. Beyond the goal to "ensure healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages," many of the other SDGs include targets that are essential to address the environmental and social determinants of health. Considering this context, the Forum on Publicâ€"Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety convened a workshop series to examine potential opportunities to engage the private sector and develop partnerships to advance health and the SDGs. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop series.

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) and other private governance instruments (e.g., Fair Trade, Forest Stewardship Council, Fair Wear Foundation, GLOBALGAP) are increasingly regulating global production processes and economic activities. VSS verify the compliance of products or production processes with sustainability standards. The importance of voluntary sustainability standards is now widely recognized. After being operational for more than two decades, they have established themselves as private governance instruments. This recognition is also exemplified by their integration in public regulatory approaches. Governments and international organizations are partnering with voluntary sustainability standards to pursue sustainable development policies. We witness the integration of VSS in the regulatory approaches of local and national governments in countries around the world, the integration of VSS in trade policies, the emergence of public–private initiatives to govern global supply chains, and the inclusion of private initiatives in experimentalist governance regimes. This Special Issue seeks to bring together research on the interface between private and public governance. We welcome contributions which analyze specific case studies on the emergence and development of these private–public interactions, the design of public–private governance, the effectiveness of these governance arrangements, and critical perspectives on the possibilities and limitations of such public–private forms of governance. We welcome multi-disciplinary perspectives including contributions from economics, political science, law, sociology, geography, and anthropology. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

UNDP’s Private Sector and Foundations Strategy for the Sustainable Development Goals 2016–2020 defines how UNDP plans to engage with – and work on – sustainable development issues with the private sector and philanthropic foundations. The goal is to enable these actors to become transformative partners in implementing all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to achieve UNDP’s vision of poverty eradication and a reduction in inequalities. The strategy aims to position UNDP as a partner of choice for the private sector and foundations in SDG implementation, while maximizing the impact of the private sector and philanthropy on sustainable development. The target audience for this strategy includes our partners in the private sector and philanthropy as well as UNDP Headquarters units, regional bureaux, regional hubs and country offices that work with the private sector and foundations on development issues. It explains UNDP’s programmatic approach in working directly with the private sector and foundations as well as with other partners involved in development. By engaging the private sector and foundations through this strategy, UNDP can support governments to establish an enabling environment for aligning these stakeholders’ core operations with the SDGs. This strategy is complementary to UNDP’s Green Commodities and Trade Guidance Note, UNDP Guidance Note on Jobs and Livelihoods, UNDP’s Strategy for Supporting Sustainable and Equitable Management of the Extractive Sector for Human Development, International Financial Institutions Partnership Strategy 2016-2020, the Recovery Strategy, UNDP support to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Policy and Programme brief and the Mainstreaming, Acceleration, Policy Support Approach (MAPS) enabling responsive, coherent and inclusive support to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Over the past several decades, the public and private sectors made significant investments in global health, leading to meaningful changes for many of the world's poor. These investments and the resulting progress are often concentrated in vertical health programs, such as child and maternal health, malaria, and HIV, where donors may have a strategic interest. Frequently, partnerships between donors and other stakeholders can coalesce on a specific topical area of expertise and interest. However, to sustain these successes and continue progress, there is a growing recognition of the need to strengthen health systems more broadly and build functional administrative and technical infrastructure that can support health services for all, improve the health of populations, increase the purchasing and earning power of consumers and workers, and advance global security. In June 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop on the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in health systems strengthening. Participants examined a range of incentives, innovations, and opportunities for relevant sectors and stakeholders in strengthening health systems through partnerships; to explore lessons learned from pervious and ongoing efforts with the goal of illuminating how to improve performance and outcomes going forward; and to discuss measuring the value and outcomes of investments and documenting success in partnerships focused on health systems strengthening. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

This timely Companion analyses how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can accelerate the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Global experts from a wide range of disciplines develop a flexible, diverse, and reconstructed form of CSR and illustrate how it can help build an inclusive and sustainable future.