179

Innovation Strategies for Addressing Today’s

Healthcare Challenges:
Leveraging Public-Private Partnerships to Achieve Results
Researched and written by Kathie Thomas and Mary Beth Luna Wolf
Edited by Stephanie Susman

Abstract
Partnerships between public health organizations and private corporations may be best
positioned to address many of the major healthcare challenges currently facing nations
across the globe. Strategically chosen partners can collaborate and share resources to
develop and successfully implement valuable solutions to achieve common goals. The
key is using innovation methods to effectively leverage the best resources provided by
each partner. The authors explain the value of public-private partnerships while also
providing insight into how specific tactics from projects undertaken by their international
communications firm, Fleishman-Hillard, assisted partnerships in their efforts to develop
innovative solutions to address healthcare challenges.

INTRODUCTION
Providing quality and affordable healthcare is one of the toughest challenges facing the United States
and many nations around the globe. Whether it is the increasing costs of care affecting both government
and business, or the rapid spread of disease to vulnerable populations, today’s healthcare issues require
new levels of strategic thinking to find innovative solutions. Public-private partnerships can offer the
right combination of insights and resources to address these challenges.
Public and private collaborations allow multiple organizations to share resources and bring together
the diverse perspectives needed to develop solutions. In today’s challenging economy, both types of
organizations can benefit by combining resources and being enthusiastically innovative: public entities
must develop new approaches to meeting public health needs, and private companies must find tactics
for growth and expansion that address the issues affecting their bottom line, which is itself greatly
impacted by the rising cost of healthcare.
Still, partnerships alone will not solve these problems. Innovation and strategy are crucial to tackling
healthcare issues. Innovation is defined as people working together to develop and implement new
ideas that create value. Strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Innovation
without strategy is not relevant, and strategy without innovation is not sustainable.
Innovation is most successful when four critical elements – collaboration, ideation, implementation,
and the assessment of value – are achieved through a rigorous process (See figure 1). The goal is not
creativity for its own sake, but the systemic fostering of new ideas that deliver value and a measureable
return on investment. Partnership strategy bridges the gap between policy and tactics, and involves
creating a fit among the partner organizations while configuring resources within a challenging
environment to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations.
With the right partners and an environment that allows them to apply their diverse insights to
develop new solutions, public-private partnerships have the opportunity to execute successful
initiatives. This paper explores how public-private partnerships developed or enhanced by the authors’
firm have effectively addressed healthcare needs in both developed and developing nations, and
explains the essential role that innovation plays in those partnerships.

OVERVIEW OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

The concept is not new; forming public-private partnerships has long been a way for organizations to
manage resources to achieve common goals. These partnerships have taken many different forms, and
at times have united the most unlikely of partners. They have often been the center of policy debates
concerning issues such as the appropriateness of private entities providing public services, and the
effectiveness of privatization of government functions. Depending on the country in which they

Volume 1 · Number 4 · 2009

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