I don’t feel like I understand your bottom line on neglectedness. If many other philanthropists are working on it, but also that doesn’t really matter because the vast majority of funding comes from governments, what is the role for philanthropic funding? It sounds like your idea is that government funding is not enough so we should just do a lot more funding on top of it. That’s reasonable, but it requires dealing a lot more with the logistics of how you could do training. The government is in a position to recruit healthcare workers, it can easily integrate training into its own facilities, it can monitor workers—philanthropists are not in a position to do any of these.
Charities I know of that work on this, like Partners in Health, solve this problem by building up their own health facilities, which is a substantial cost and would certainly change the $/DALY numbers compared to the studies.
This is a great cause area and I would consider it a slam dunk for funding if we could resolve issues about delivery!
Thanks for the comment and for reading! I agree with your interpretation of neglectedness: even when we account for both government and philanthropic aid, neonatal health is underfunded. My main point there is that philanthropic interventions will need to complement national priorities given the huge role that governments play in this space.
You’re also correct that delivering trainings is complex, but I think it’s surmountable. As far as I know, many of the cost-effectiveness studies cited were done in government-supported health facilities, so there’s some existing proof of concept. As mentioned in the next steps, NGOs need to align carefully with governments to ensure that trainings reach HWs. One step in the right direction would be to get courses accredited for continuing professional development, which provides an important incentive.
I don’t feel like I understand your bottom line on neglectedness. If many other philanthropists are working on it, but also that doesn’t really matter because the vast majority of funding comes from governments, what is the role for philanthropic funding? It sounds like your idea is that government funding is not enough so we should just do a lot more funding on top of it. That’s reasonable, but it requires dealing a lot more with the logistics of how you could do training. The government is in a position to recruit healthcare workers, it can easily integrate training into its own facilities, it can monitor workers—philanthropists are not in a position to do any of these.
Charities I know of that work on this, like Partners in Health, solve this problem by building up their own health facilities, which is a substantial cost and would certainly change the $/DALY numbers compared to the studies.
This is a great cause area and I would consider it a slam dunk for funding if we could resolve issues about delivery!
Thanks for the comment and for reading! I agree with your interpretation of neglectedness: even when we account for both government and philanthropic aid, neonatal health is underfunded. My main point there is that philanthropic interventions will need to complement national priorities given the huge role that governments play in this space.
You’re also correct that delivering trainings is complex, but I think it’s surmountable. As far as I know, many of the cost-effectiveness studies cited were done in government-supported health facilities, so there’s some existing proof of concept. As mentioned in the next steps, NGOs need to align carefully with governments to ensure that trainings reach HWs. One step in the right direction would be to get courses accredited for continuing professional development, which provides an important incentive.