Innovating new frontiers in service delivery and evidence generation

ABSTRACT

Over the past half a century since its independence, Bangladesh has done exceptionally well in human development, including the health sector. In addition to the public sector, the many innovative interventions implemented at scale by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) made important contributions in this story. This paper narrates the story of BRAC, one of the largest NGOs, highlighting a few of its selected health intervention programmes. It also describes how an internal research outfit played a significant role in BRAC’s success.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• NGO
• BRAC
• learning organisation
• implementation research
• development innovation

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Dr Imrul M. Sifat of Bangladesh Health Watch for help in constructing Table 1 of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.