As we look to greater use of SROI in the social sector, the pioneering work of organizations like Population Services International (PSI) in global health provide a powerful template. PSI, which markets affordable health products and services, estimates its effect on disease burden much like a company measures profit. Since 2007, PSI has tracked the health impact of its work as the number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted; this captures both deaths and illness PSI’s health products and services prevent. According to Amy Ratcliffe, PSI’s director of program analytics, this metric allows PSI to aggregate impact across its portfolio, as well as disaggregate it for comparisons, cost-effectiveness analysis, and forecasting within countries or health areas. Since the DALYs averted metric is specific to a given year, country, disease outcome, and intervention, PSI can consider complex investment trade-offs such as, “What can we gain from scaling up malaria control in Mali?” Or, “What are the long-term implications of delaying HIV testing in Zimbabwe?”
PSI has gone one step further in recent years, standardizing its health impact metrics with leading external models endorsed by academics, partners, governments, and donors. In doing so, PSI has greatly improved both efficiency and confidence in its own measurement, and driven greater alignment and collaboration in its field.
Read the full article on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website.
