Steven Chapman at Population Services International (PSI) has written a thoughtful piece on PSI’s approach to sustainability. He comments:
More than 10 years ago, PSI published its first position statement on sustainability – distancing itself from the almost exclusive focus on financial sustainability used by other social marketing organizations. Instead, we emphasized producing health and quality-of-life benefits at scale and with equity, increasing cost-effectiveness, minimizing financial subsidies, reducing the financial vulnerability of our social marketing partners in the developing world, and building unique competencies needed to address the public health challenges of today and tomorrow.
We recently updated that position statement using new examples, yet reaffirming its central point. For PSI, sustainability is achieving positive public health impact and continuing that impact over time. At PSI, we believe the best way to do this is to use social marketing approaches that make it easier for populations to access products, services and information that address the priority contributors to a country’s burden of disease and unintended pregnancy. We believe that high proportions of the vulnerable and low-income populations over time will adopt healthy behaviors; the burden of disease will decrease and change; and that donor subsidies can be reduced, eliminated or shifted to other priorities over time.