Bettina Brunner

Bettina Brunner is an international health professional bringing more than 19 years of professional experience working in HIV and AIDS, family planning and reproductive health. She focuses on private sector engagement, program management, private health sector assessments, public-private partnerships in health, health systems strengthening, technical management and grant writing. She has extensive experience working for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank and is a specialist in West Africa. She has developed and tested policy tools, particularly tools for engaging the private health sector.

Brunner currently serves as portfolio manager for the Benin Private Sector Health Partnership Activity, where she leads efforts to increase the private sector’s role in healthcare delivery and strengthen public-private engagement. She also is regional manager with the Sustaining Health Outcomes in the Private Sector Plus (SHOPS Plus) project for Francophone Africa. She oversees programs in West Africa focused on improving and sustaining global health outcomes through public-private engagement.

Before joining Abt, Brunner was a policy consultant at the World Bank Group with the Health in Africa Initiative. She served as program manager for two online toolkits (Private Health Policy Toolkit for Africa and Private Health Policy Toolkit) focused on improving government policies to engage the private health sector. She conducted surveys of policymakers in Kenya and Burkina Faso and coordinated technical review committees. She also worked for 10 years as an international health consultant, conducting assessments, market studies, evaluations, and public-private partnership activities in Africa and Asia. Brunner is fluent in French.

Expertise

• Private sector engagement
• Public-private dialogue and partnerships
• Policy and health systems strengthening
• Developing and testing policy tools
• Formative research
• Workplace health programs
• Project management

Key Projects

• Portfolio Manager, Benin Private Sector Health Partnership Activity
• Has led SHOPS Plus field activities in numerous countries and serves as the public-private engagement lead
• Managed and served as lead author on private sector assessments in Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Senegal and a six-country macro-level assessment in West Africa
• Served as project manager on the Social Auditing Standards Project of the US Department of State (Verité)
• Facilitated launch of private health sector forums in Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Togo and development of regional private sector health federation for West Africa

Publications

• DRC Private Sector Assessment
• Senegal Private Sector Assessment: Selected Health Products and Services, Abt Global, 2016
• West Africa Private Health Sector: Six Macro-Level Assessments, Abt Global, 2015;
• The Total Market Approach, USAID Global Health eLearning Center
• Unlocking the Potential of the Private Health Sector, blogs.worldbank.org