03 Apr 2009Working Paper Summaries

Applying the Care Delivery Value Chain: HIV/AIDS Care in Resource Poor Settings

by Joseph Rhatigan, Sachin Jain, Joia S. Mukherjee and Michael E. Porter

The prevention and treatment of a complex disease such as HIV/AIDS in resource‐poor settings presents enormous challenges. Many of the social and economic factors that make populations living in these settings vulnerable to HIV/AIDS such as poverty, malnutrition, and political instability conspire to create barriers to effective care delivery. Understanding how interventions are related to each other and how local socioeconomic factors influence them is critical to effective program design. The Care Delivery Value Chain (CDVC) looks at care as an overall system, not as a series of discrete interventions, and describes the activities required to deliver care, illustrating their sequence and organization. Government agencies, philanthropic organizations, and non‐governmental organizations can use the framework to improve HIV/AIDS care delivery. Key concepts include:

The CDVC framework allows one to outline and analyze the process of care delivery for a medical condition and provide maximize value for patients.
The CDVC framework can map the activities associated with HIV/AIDS care delivery in resource-poor settings to illuminate effective linkage and coordination.
The CDVC framework allows synthesis of knowledge about the overall system of care delivery and provides a common language for improving it.

Author Abstract

The care delivery value chain is a framework that can help conceptualize the organization and structure of care delivery for medical conditions. We apply this framework to HIV/AIDS care in resource-limited settings. Several conclusions arise that can help inform the design of care delivery platforms for HIV/AIDS.