For-profit Partners Research Articles

Novel and Proven Models of Public, Private, and Public-Private Partnerships in Healthcare: An Update.

Initiatives to share assets in the life science sector through dedicated partnerships had and still have a multitude of different aspects in the past few decades. The range goes from industry partners, small and big companies, in bilateral agreements with academic institutions up to large privately and publicly funded consortia. In general, the term public-private partnership (PPP) is used when at least one public (non-profit, academic, and/or government) part and one or more private for-profit partners are involved. A Public-Private Partnership is often driven by a public body, i.e. a ministry or a public agency. Their synergism has been described 10years ago (Dearing, Science 315(19):344-347, 2007; Casty and Wieman, Ther Innov Regul Sci 47(3):375-383, 2013; Stevens et al., Biotechnol Law Rep 34(4):153-165, 2015). So why view this synergism again today? It will be shown that the situation in life science has changed: novel partners acting digital, data expertise being involved on many levels and novel partnering models arising. Success and challenges will be described in this chapter.

Common Grounding: How to Nurture Cross-Sector Collaborations for Social Innovation

In this paper, we identify the role of common grounding, a continuous and interactional alignment of understandings and emotional engagement, in initiating and sustaining cross-sector collaborations for social innovation. Through a 32-month inductive qualitative study, we explore how Green City Force (GCF), a NYC not-for-profit organization, successfully initiated and sustained collaborations with public, not-for-profit, and for-profit partners to produce new solutions to longstanding social and environmental issues. We found that GCF engaged partners through common grounding, which involved two types of interactions: conversations that created mutual understanding and trust; and rituals which provided evidence of the value of the collaboration and generated emotional attachment to it. Common grounding was enacted within a flexible scheme delineated along four dimensions – two objectives and two modes of engagement. By allowing multiple interpretations, the scheme was key in fostering the interests of diverse partners. Our paper contributes to the literatures on cross-sector collaboration and social innovation. It highlights collaboration as a continuous social accomplishment requiring both cognitive and emotional engagement. It also shows the value of ambiguity, defined as the quality of being open to more than one interpretation, to trigger and sustain collaborations when their purpose is the production of innovative solutions

Promotion of Transaction-Based Cause-Related Marketing: How Should the Source and the Impact of the Partnership Be Presented

This study used a 2 (promoting partner: for-profit vs. nonprofit) by 2 (impact: identifiable vs. statistical) between-subjects design collecting data online through Amazon Mechanical Turk from 302 participants. Attitudes toward the promoting partner were more favorable was when the promoted partner was the nonprofit (vs. for-profit). Further, attitude fully mediated the relationship between promoting partner frame and purchase intention. Our findings provide useful practical insight in that promoting the partnership through the nonprofit partner may yield better results than promoting it through the for-profit partner for transaction-based CRM activities.

Public-private Partnership: How and Why Six Community Colleges Loved and Left a For-profit Partner

Colleges are increasingly open to partnering with private entities to implement new and innovative programs. Community colleges, in particular, may find such partnerships beneficial, given that these institutions often lack the necessary resources to invest up-front in programs that may yield strong long-term dividends. In this article we report on an examination of a partnership between a privately-held firm and six community colleges, which had established honors programs with the goal of facilitating students’ transfer to highly selective institutions. Our analysis traces the evolution of the partnership and the reasons for its eventual failure, and we offer insights for public institutions and privately-held companies wishing to establish similar partnerships.

Multi-layer agency problems in a non-profit and for-profit collaboration: a case study of a delicatessen product in support of a minority

The study investigated the collaboration between a non-profit and a for-profit organization and evaluated the benefits and drawbacks of the collaboration for the non-profit partner. The non-profit partner is a charitable organization that supports an ethnic minority in one of the least economically affluent European countries. The collaboration stemmed from a project, in which members of the minority cultivated and processed a delicatessen product for the market in more affluent European countries. The collaboration did not succeed to fully produce the desired results. It was negatively affected by inadequate communication, the absence of meta-goals, as well as classical and multi-level agency problems. In part due to the inexperience of both partners with such collaborations, the for-profit partner seems to have taken hidden actions. These actions did not contribute to the project goals, respectively jeopardized the goals and reputation of the non-profit partner.

Outsourcing of Academic Clinical Laboratories: Experiences and Lessons From the Association of Pathology Chairs Laboratory Outsourcing Survey

American hospitals are increasingly turning to service outsourcing to reduce costs, including laboratory services. Studies of this practice have largely focused on nonacademic medical centers. In contrast, academic medical centers have unique practice environments and unique mission considerations. We sought to elucidate and analyze clinical laboratory outsourcing experiences in US academic medical centers. Seventeen chairs of pathology with relevant experience were willing to participate in in-depth interviews about their experiences. Anticipated financial benefits from joint venture arrangements often eroded after the initial years of the agreement, due to increased test pricing, management fees, duplication of services in support of inpatients, and lack of incentive for utilization control on the part of the for-profit partner. Outsourcing can preclude development of lucrative outreach programs; such programs were successfully launched in several cases after joint ventures were either avoided or terminated. Common complaints included poor test turnaround time and problems with test quality (especially in molecular pathology, microbiology, and flow cytometry), leading to clinician dissatisfaction. Joint ventures adversely affected retention of academically oriented clinical pathology faculty, with adverse effects on research and education, which further exacerbated clinician dissatisfaction due to lack of available consultative expertise. Resident education in pathology and in other disciplines (especially infectious disease) suffered both from lack of on-site laboratory capabilities and from lack of teaching faculty. Most joint ventures were initiated with little or no input from pathology leadership, and input from pathology leadership was seen to have been critical in those cases where such arrangements were declined or terminated.

Nonprofit Resource Contribution and Mission Alignment in Interorganizational, Cross-Sector Public Health Networks

Given the complexity of today’s social and political dilemmas, a common method of program and policy implementation is surfacing in the form of interorganizational, cross-sector goal-directed networks. This article applies the “Core Dimensions of Connectivity” framework to analyze how the increasing inclusion of nonprofit organizations in public health goal-directed interorganizational networks is associated with goal achievement. Variables related to sector-based resource contributions and mission alignment were analyzed in their relation to outcomes in 177 networks. The findings indicate that significant differences exist across sectors. Compared to public and for-profit organizations, nonprofit organizations bring a greater number and diversity of resources to public health networks, and are perceived by their public and for-profit partners as having the strongest support of the network’s mission. We also find that resource contributions and mission alignment affect outcome achievement. This article discusses practical challenges networks face and informs techniques for effectively managing interorganizational goal-directed networks.

Models of public–private engagement for health services delivery and financing in Southern Africa: a systematic review

In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the private sector-including international donors, non-governmental organizations, for-profit providers and traditional healers-plays a significant role in health financing and delivery. The use of the private sector in furthering public health goals is increasingly common. By working with the private sector through public -: private engagement (PPE), states can harness private sector resources to further public health goals. PPE initiatives can take a variety of forms and understanding of these models is limited. This paper presents the results of a Campbell systematic literature review conducted to establish the types and the prevalence of PPE projects for health service delivery and financing in Southern Africa. PPE initiatives identified through the review were categorized according to a PPE typology. The review reveals that the full range of PPE models, eight distinct models, are utilized in the Southern African context. The distribution of the available evidence-including significant gaps in the literature-is discussed, and key considerations for researchers, implementers, and current and potential PPE partners are presented. It was found that the literature is disproportionately representative of PPE initiatives located in South Africa, and of those that involve for-profit partners and international donors. A significant gap in the literature identified through the study is the scarcity of information regarding the relationship between international donors and national governments. This information is key to strengthening these partnerships, improving partnership outcomes and capacitating recipient countries. The need for research that disaggregates PPE models and investigates PPE functioning in context is demonstrated.

Walking a Fine Line

As they assemble organizations from different economic sectors, intersectoral collaborations are co-constituted by institutional pluralism. However, the intimacy and inequality of these arrangements also constrain an organization’s ability to respond strategically to the concomitant institutional pluralism. Members of the organization experience pluralism as a tension I call moral ambivalence, that is, they simultaneously hold opposing judgments about their actions or the situations in which they find themselves. Moral ambivalence leads actors to engage in institutional work, pragmatic compromises directed toward coping with the competing institutional rules they face. This institutional work produces hybrid actions that, in turn, help the organization maintain internal cohesion and prevent negative outcomes. The article traces the sources of institutional pluralism to organizational imprinting from for-profit partners and institutional pressures from other members of the field. Data come from an ethnography of a single nonprofit organization that collaborates with several large for-profit organizations.

Concurrent Sourcing in the Public Sector: A Strategy to Manage Contracting Risk

ABSTRACT Public administration scholars utilize transaction cost theory to explain the contracting dichotomy between make or buy. However, recent theoretical developments point to a mixed position, “make and buy,” as a strategic management choice. We draw insights from the private sector management literature on what it terms “concurrent sourcing” to build a theory for public sector mixed contracting, but argue that public managers face a broader range of contracting agents (both private for-profit and public intergovernmental) than private sector managers. The choice of contract agent makes local government contracting important in elaborating a theory of concurrent sourcing. Our empirical findings show that local government managers use concurrent sourcing as a strategy to mitigate potential contracting risks. We find mixed contracting is more common with for-profit agents and total contracting out is more common in contracts to other governments. When contracting with for-profit partners, mixed delivery helps reduce risk, promote market complementarities, and ensure attention to citizen interests.

Partnering to Create a More Livable City

Physical inactivity is a major public health problem. While individual (eg, attitudes, values, beliefs) and social (eg, social support) factors play a role, access to an activity-safe local environment can have a significant influence. Environments that include accessible opportunities for physical activity, a component of livability, require cooperation from many sectors including nonprofit, government, educational, and for profit. This study used a mixed-methods network mapping approach to evaluate a multisector network focused on increasing the livability of St Louis, Missouri. Eighteen network members participated in in-depth interviews about their livability partners. The participants identified 86 unique partners in the region, with a majority representing nonprofit and government organizations and fewer from the education and for-profit sectors. Participants trusted 88% of their partners and felt that 83% of partners shared their mission and vision. Trust and shared mission and vision varied across organization types. Specifically, 89% of nonprofit partners were thought to share a mission/vision and 87% were trusted. Participants felt that 87% of government partners shared their mission/vision and 91% were trusted. Participants shared mission/vision with 75% and trusted 75% of educational partners. Finally, 44% of for-profit partners were thought to share mission/vision and 100% were trusted. For-profit partners also had more positive influence than others, while government partners had the highest average negative influence. Finally, while most relationships were mutual, relationships with for-profit partners were mostly one-directional, with for-profit partners sending resources to other network members. Livability efforts in St Louis might benefit from recruiting additional for-profit partners that provide the network with new perspectives and needed resources, and from cultivating positive partnerships with government organizations that can assist with local policy development and enforcement.

Repurposing Approved and Abandoned Drugs for the Treatment and Prevention of Cancer through Public–Private Partnership

The Learning Collaborative (TLC) is a dedicated collaboration between the NIH Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) and its Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), and KUCC to discover and develop new drug therapies for rare blood cancers. TLC is creating a pipeline of new therapies to treat blood cancers using less traditional forms of drug discovery and development. The Learning Collaborative is focused on both the discovery of new blood cancer treatments as well as identifying new uses for approved and abandoned drugs, termed drug repurposing. Repurposing approved and abandoned drugs for cancer represents an opportunity to rapidly advance to patients promising drug therapies by capitalizing on existing data and experience. TLC9s first project, which is also a pilot project of the TRND program, focuses on repurposing an existing small molecule drug, auranofin, initially approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis in the mid-1980s. Auranofin is being evaluated by The Learning Collaborative as a treatment for relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In just two years after the identification of auranofin9s activity in CLL cells, this project has entered clinical trials. The Learning Collaborative will engage a for-profit partner to advance auranofin through late stage drug development, registration and commercialization. TLC has the unique ability to de-risk promising drug therapies, like auranofin, using an innovative approach to quickly determine proof-of-concept. The partnership is named The Learning Collaborative because this model is scalable, applicable across a wide range of therapeutic areas, and replicable by organizations committed to innovative models of collaboration. TLC continues to explore solutions to barriers that include addressing regulatory science issues (with particular focus on repurposing off patent and abandoned drugs for rare and neglected diseases) and defining exclusivity path(s) to interest future for-profit partners.

State Mental Health Policy: "We Never Used to Do Things This Way": Behavioral Health Care Reform in New Mexico

State Mental Health Policy: "We Never Used to Do Things This Way": Behavioral Health Care Reform in New Mexico

From Idea to Impact: Funding Invention for Sustainability

approach to international development jointly emphasizing entrepreneurship and technology. Instead of awarding large grants and loans to national governments, these institutions are emphasizing smaller awards and contracts made to entrepreneurs who invent new technologies or adapt existing technologies to meet the needs of people in the world’s poorest places. Some of these technologies allow people previously making less than $2/day to undertake new income-generating activities; others help people meet basic needs. Many do both. The Lemelson Foundation, created by Jerome Lemelson, one of the U.S.’ most prolific inventors, is among the philanthropic organizations taking this approach. Lemelson programs are built on the premise that invention drives prosperity. In this article I describe the Foundation’s international funding strategy, the lessons it has learned through non profit and for-profit partners, and its efforts to join others in advancing an entrepreneurial approach to international development. One of the Foundation’s earliest international partners was Kenya-based KickStart (see article by Martin Fisher in this issue). The Foundation funded two KickStart projects. In 2003, KickStart used a $90,000 Lemelson grant to design and test-market two new low-cost welldrilling technologies for farmers in Africa. These new technologies would enable farmers living in regions without surface water to manually drill small diameter tube-wells up to 70 feet deep . No such technologies were available in East Africa. The first technology was designed to drill through soft soils, while the second was designed for drilling through hard soils and even rocks. Both were intended to be used in conjunction with KickStart’s low-cost shallow-well pump and deep-well irrigation pump. The soft-soil drill performed well in feasibility tests and has since been purchased by local Julia Novy-Hildesley

Promoting the dissemination of decision aids: an odyssey in a dysfunctional health care financing system.

The usefulness of patient decision aids (PtDAs) is well documented, yet they are not in widespread use. Barriers include assuring balance and fairness (auspices matter), the cost of producing and maintaining them, and getting them into the hands of patients at the right time. The Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making and its for-profit partner, Health Dialog, have developed a creative business model that helps overcome these barriers and has greatly expanded the reach of decision aids.

Novel trends in orphan market drug discovery: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as a case study

As new lead discovery technologies of high throughput screening and rational drug design have been incorporated into pharmaceutical and biotechnology drug discovery programs, researchers have focused on the applying these new technologies in diseases traditionally neglected by for-profit drug discovery efforts. This article reviews general trends in orphan disease lead discovery, identifies best practices of orphan market drug discovery and provides an overview of recent ALS lead discovery programs and drug development according to these metrics. Best practices in orphan market drug discovery embodied by programs like the NIH Anticonvulsant Screening Program include the (1) management of timelines and priorities, (2) engagement of for-profit partners, (3) creative application of technology, (4) collaboration, and (5) flexibility. Recent trends in ALS lead discovery have been shaped not only by the predominance of animal models of disease over in vitro models, but also by the successes and best practices of these earlier orphan market drug discovery programs. The ALS Treatment Initiative, the Johns Hopkins Center for ALS Research, the ALS Association, and the ALS Therapy Development Foundation have all initiated lead discovery programs in the past several years which seek to utilize existing experimental models of the disease and challenge assumptions about the linear nature of the lead discovery and development process. The compounds currently in clinical evaluation for ALS were identified as leads from a variety of sources, further reinforcing the transforming effect these new lead discovery programs have had on drug discovery and development in ALS. We conclude our review with an overview of the challenges and opportunities lead discovery in ALS currently faces, ultimately concluding that ALS lead discovery, and indeed orphan market drug discovery in general, would most benefit from more centralized lead discovery management, expanded national access to core facilities for lead discovery, and matrixed simultaneous screening of multiple compounds for multiple neglected diseases.

Novel trends in orphan market drug discovery: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as a case study.

As new lead discovery technologies of high throughput screening and rational drug design have been incorporated into pharmaceutical and biotechnology drug discovery programs, researchers have focused on the applying these new technologies in diseases traditionally neglected by for-profit drug discovery efforts. This article reviews general trends in orphan disease lead discovery, identifies best practices of orphan market drug discovery and provides an overview of recent ALS lead discovery programs and drug development according to these metrics. Best practices in orphan market drug discovery embodied by programs like the NIH Anticonvulsant Screening Program include the (1) management of timelines and priorities, (2) engagement of for-profit partners, (3) creative application of technology, (4) collaboration, and (5) flexibility. Recent trends in ALS lead discovery have been shaped not only by the predominance of animal models of disease over in vitro models, but also by the successes and best practices of these earlier orphan market drug discovery programs. The ALS Treatment Initiative, the Johns Hopkins Center for ALS Research, the ALS Association, and the ALS Therapy Development Foundation have all initiated lead discovery programs in the past several years which seek to utilize existing experimental models of the disease and challenge assumptions about the linear nature of the lead discovery and development process. The compounds currently in clinical evaluation for ALS were identified as leads from a variety of sources, further reinforcing the transforming effect these new lead discovery programs have had on drug discovery and development in ALS. We conclude our review with an overview of the challenges and opportunities lead discovery in ALS currently faces, ultimately concluding that ALS lead discovery, and indeed orphan market drug discovery in general, would most benefit from more centralized lead discovery management, expanded national access to core facilities for lead discovery, and matrixed simultaneous screening of multiple compounds for multiple neglected diseases.

Strategic and economic factors in the hospital conversion process.

Cost containment and managed care pressures are driving hospitals to consolidate. Affiliation proposals from not-for-profit and for-profit partners will offer fundamentally different solutions to governance and economic issues. A clear definition of goals; an open, conflict-free proposal process; and a good understanding of value are the key ingredients of a successful transaction and regulatory approval, especially in an environment of heightened political interest in conversions.