Strengthening the Global Family Planning Supply Chain

HIGHLIGHTS

  • The challenges of managing a global supply chain make it difficult for family planning commodities to reach the world’s poorest women and girls.
  • In partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we worked collaboratively with the Global Family Planning Visual Analytics Network (GFPVAN) to develop recommendations to strengthen its supply visibility platform.
  • Leveraging existing behavioral science research, we proposed pricing and marketing strategies that could increase perceived value, engagement, and subscription of the platform.

The Challenge

For countries to meet their own family planning goals, women must have access to the right family planning commodity at the right time. Yet commodities must make long journeys across the globe—with information being continuously passed between country officials, donors, global procurers, manufacturers, and shippers—to reach the world’s poorest women and girls. 

A weak supply chain, mired with insufficient or incorrect data, can result in family planning stockouts, overstocks, wastage, expiration of methods, and ultimately, unmet need. In partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we worked collaboratively to strengthen the Global Family Planning Visual Analytics Network (GFPVAN), a digital platform meant to link procurers, manufacturers, shippers, and countries in an active network focused on product flow into countries. We used behavioral science insights to develop recommendations to strengthen the value proposition of the platform to ensure its long-term financial sustainability.

 

Our Approach

To develop our recommendations, we conducted research with key stakeholder groups, including country ministries of health (with particular focus on Ghana and Malawi), global procurers, and investors. We sought to understand their perceptions of the GFPVAN platform and how the platform could respond to their most pressing family planning commodity challenges. We also leveraged existing behavioral science research to propose pricing and marketing strategies that could increase perceived value, engagement, and subscription of the platform.

 

Results

Our recommendations to improve the long-term sustainability of the GFPVAN platform were shared with senior leadership and the GFPVAN initiative board of directors to inform refinements to their business plan.

 

Takeaway

The GFPVAN aims to forever change the way public health supply chains work to better reach vulnerable populations with the supplies they need. A long-term sustainable solution to strengthen the global family planning supply chain can mean the difference between sickness and health for women all over the world.

Interested in our work applying behavioral science to global health? Email gh@ideas42.org or tweet at @ideas42 to join the conversation.

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