Abstract
Despite increased support for Total Market Approaches that leverage the public, NGO and commercial sectors to meet the need for health products and services, government-led TMAs are rare. This activity is in response to a need identified by the Reproductive health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) to assist governments in playing a stewardship role in the implementation of TMAs.
The stewardship role of the government involves collecting and analyzing data, engaging other sectors, regulating the quality of Family Planning and Reproductive Health (FP/RH) supplies, and monitoring progress along TMA indicators. This would enable the public sector to ensure commodity security and equity, and improve the targeting of subsidies. With the proper indicators, tool and implementation strategy, efforts to build capacity for TMAs within the public health sector can be measured and lead to evidence-based policies and programs.
In April 2015, the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) awarded an Innovation grant to Abt Associates to develop and test a tool to assess the capacity of a government to steward a TMA for FP/RH commodities. The Total Market Approach Stewardship Capacity Tool (TMASCT) was developed in three stages, including a design stage, a stakeholder engagement and field-testing stage, and a revision stage. This report describes the methodology used to develop the tool, and presents the findings of the field testing and subsequent revisions to the tool and indicators
