A Healthy Bottom Line: Health Enterprises and the Challenge of Multiple Regimes of Value

Central to the project of global health (e.g. the United Nation’s SDG goal of “good health and well-being for all”) is the identification and diffusion of effective health equity interventions across multiple communities and locales. Crucial to this endeavor is the work of health enterprises: organizations that sell affordable products and services that improve access to healthcare for disadvantaged populations. Drawing from qualitative data and using abductive analysis, this paper examines the challenges faced by a sample of health enterprises as they seek to establish the health benefits and the economic sustainability of a new health intervention in their development of a new business model. Importantly, these organizations must negotiate varied and changing criteria for and practices of valuation as they move promising models of health care from the Global South (where they typically originate) to the Global North for their financialization and marketization. Thus, one key determinant of success for health enterprises is their capacity to capture and communicate multiple regimes of value as they move health interventions across geographical locales.