Partnerships for Women's Health: Striving for Best Practice Within the UN Global Compact

Every minute, at least one woman dies from pregnancy or childbirth complications while twenty more suffer injury, infection, or disease. Despite medical advances and years of national and international policy declarations, this tragic situation remains particularly severe in developing countries.This book draws together insights and experiences of development practitioners, policymakers, academic experts, and private sector partners to describe the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). A public-private partnership based in India, the WHI took a new approach to solving the apparently intractable problem of poor women's health. The observations and analyses in this volume describe how the WHI implemented a project that would make a real difference in women's lives, while meeting private sector commercial goals.By opening the project to independent assessment, the WHI articulated new standards for best practice in publicprivate partnership, including such issues as communications, objective setting, ongoing partnership management, and real health outcomes. While helping the WHI grow and expand to other regions, these standards can also inform and shape other effective public-private partnerships in the future.