Making a Catalytic Impact – Defining and Measuring Our Approach to Systems Change

Posted Julho 10, 2023

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

By Seth McGovern, Head Marketing Dynamics and Analytics, PSI

Population Services International (PSI) is evolving, and so are the ways we demonstrate health impact. We continue to dedicate ourselves to making it easier for people to live healthier lives and measuring the impact of these efforts. While the mission remains unchanged, we are adjusting our approach to respond to developments in the markets in which we work, resulting in more sophisticated healthcare systems.

Increasingly, PSI is working to scale consumer-powered healthcare by shaping more effective mixed health systems. This means going beyond directly delivering products and services – although we continue to do so through our social businesses, now consolidated under VIYA Health – to elevating consumer insights, facilitating integrated quality care networks, and shaping health markets.

To measure our impact, we rely on a guiding metric – catalytic users reached.

While we continue to measure the number of users reached through direct delivery of products and services, catalytic users reached takes it a step further by capturing PSI’s progress in building more consumer-powered health systems and better-functioning health markets. More specifically, it encompasses the sustainable impact on people’s lives resulting from a process of influencing with or through other actors rather than through direct intervention. It captures the ripple effect of our work, extending beyond direct service delivery and creating sustainable change at the individual, system, and community levels.

But what does this look like in practice?

Our market-based sanitation work in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin are perfect examples. These projects develop functioning markets for household sanitation products by making it easier for households to upgrade their sanitation infrastructure. PSI also works to develop supportive governance, behavior change, and effective financing mechanisms to strengthen sanitation markets.

By doing so, we not only increase access to improved sanitation but also foster sustainable markets that will continue serving consumers long after PSI’s intervention period ends. Because sustainability is central to our catalytic approach, these interventions have and will continue to serve households for years beyond the project’s end.

PSI is seeing results from this work, at scale. Our interventions are expected to result in 49.5 million catalytic users reached between 2021 and 2023. Our goal: to reach 67 million catalytic users by the end of 2023 and more in subsequent years.

We are just getting started.

Measuring our contribution to strong health systems and effective health markets is critical to producing the measurable results many of our partners rely on. We believe that designing, delivering, and measuring the impact catalytic programming helps PSI to:

Amplify Health Impact. Catalytic impact enables us to accelerate and amplify the positive changes that would occur in the absence of our intervention. By leveraging our expertise, resources, and partnerships, we ensure that our efforts yield even greater health benefits for individuals and communities.
Create Sustainable Change. PSI’s focus on catalytic impact goes beyond short-term outcomes. We aim to create sustainable change by influencing systems and replicating successful interventions at scale. This approach increases the likelihood that our efforts will continue to benefit people’s lives long after our direct involvement ends.
Foster Collaboration and Systemic Change. Catalytic impact relies on collaboration with and through other actors, including governments, private businesses, local non-governmental organizations and other partners. This collaboration broadens our reach and fosters lasting change by strengthening health systems and enabling collective impact.

This work goes beyond PSI.

We are engaged in a joint initiative with other organizations, including CARE, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Results for Development (R4D), IDinsight, and the Global Innovation Fund, to advocate for the recognition and measurement of catalytic impact, and use of catalytic programming approaches. Together, we are defining catalytic impact, outlining key measurement principles, and setting an agenda to enhance global capacity to design and measure catalytic programs.

Catalytic impact lies at the core of PSI’s mission to achieving Universal Health Coverage. By fostering sustainable change through systems-level interventions, we maximize the health impact of our work. Reporting users reached in this way helps us to stay focused on the consumer, even when we are working to change systems.

We hope that you will join us on this measurement (r)evolution.

For questions, please contact Seth McGovern ([email protected]).