Public Health Entrepreneurship (PHE) simply means the catalyst of population health pioneer of innovation that benefits the well-being of humanity. As we all know Public Health is multidisciplinary approach and it always welcome new ideas to make better Health indicators. PHE is more likely to social Entrepreneur who works for society, for example our CNN hero Anuradha Koirala, Henry Dunant (founder of redcross), Simon Berry, Mingel Luengo, Casey Fenton, Arnaud Raskin, Frank Hoffmann, Thorkil Sonne, Raul Krauthausen, Ursula Sladek, Albina Ruiz, Mohammed Yunus and so on. They all are social Entrepreneur who directly or indirectly works in the public health related areas. People often misunderstood PHE as doing profit making business by building Hospital, Pharmacies; clinics etc. public Health is overall people’s health so we should think about major population than individual. The ultimate result of PHE is to maximize the wellbeing of population along with innovation of new ideas in public health sector. It also contributes in economic sector of the country. PHE provides platform on express public health knowledge into effective, sustainable, and scalable solutions.
In Nepal, we only think the scope of public health in the area of project, NGOs/INGOs and Lecturer or Professor in TU, KU and PU (both Pokhara and Purbanchal) but we rarely link up entrepreneur ideas in public health. In developed countries many universities added this course in their curriculum to train the next generation of public health practitioners. Entrepreneurial sector is largely growing day by day and there is consistent decrease in public sector and nonprofit funding sources so we required PHE to deal with public health problems. Entrepreneurship also provides self sustaining solution to public health problems. Nepal is in the midst of a major shift in the healthcare economy and with this has come lots of opportunities for entrepreneur. Let’s move toward the scope of public health Entrepreneurship;
- Health Insurance:
One of the best examples of PHE/ Social Entrepreneurship is the concept of health insurance because it connects health with entrepreneurship ideas. Health Insurance helps in raising and pooling funds to finance health services along with public, private, mixed health insurance. In developed countries like UK and US, many of employers give private health insurance to their employees where employees add significant amount of the costs. It is the reason that health insurance is one of the best options in Public health entrepreneurship. The importance of health insurance availability increases for entrepreneurs that are self funded. Social health insurance concept is also evolving in Nepal day by day. Its major objective is to protect people from financial hardship and reduce out of pocket expenditure. Despite that many government and private companies give health insurance facilities to their employees.
- Life insurance companies:
Unlike health insurance, establishment of life insurance companies mixed with other economic activities. Insurance have unified characteristics as an entrepreneurship and provides indirect economic protection from risk. In Nepal, there are total 19 Life Insurance Company, 20 Non life insurance company and 1 Re- insurance company.
- Public health Consultancy
It is the group of people who have in-depth knowledge of Public Health. They give expert advice in particular subject and earn money from it. You may start consultancies for health research where you give advice on tool development. In Nepal, there are many students who are confusing on their research topics. They don’t know about Proposal Development, research methodology and Data Analysis. Unlike students many NGO/INGO required expert advice on their project and program so there is great opportunity to develop entrepreneurship ideas in public health consultancy areas.
- Fitness Center
The fitness center is quickly growing industry which helps to maintain healthy lives both physically, mentally or emotionally. In urban area of Nepal most of the people have sedentary lifestyle with intake of fat and sugar loaded diet so there is risk of triple burden of disease. In future investment in fitness center is one of the best Public health entrepreneurship ideas because every year new innovative ideas are developing in this industry to meet their customer satisfaction and attract them on it.
- Establishment of health promotion center
Establishment of promotion center work in the area of public health inspection, disseminating information, provide laboratory test etc. Urban sector of Nepal are facing triple burden i.e. poverty, infectious disease and non communicable disease. Health promotion center promote health and prevent disease.
- Training Institution
Public health student required various training. This training develops their quality in work and help in better productivity. In Nepal, one of the best training institutions within government is National Health training centers of DOHS. Unlike that we may start different training institution to make capable student in public health sector. For example: training institution of PRA/PLA training for student before Community Diagnosis Program.
- Health Education material Production
Health educations are those materials which aid in teaching learning practices which delivered specific information and instruction about health. We can earn profit from making innovative design, exchange of facts, ideas and opinion through health learning materials. There may be option of audio visual health learning material start by making your own YouTube channel or Website and earn from it. Beside that training manual development and message mapping is also profitable.
At last, there are many scopes of large scale companies in public health sectors in Nepal. Some of them are as follows:
- Rehabilitation center
- Stop tobacco reality program on TV, Radio or street drama
- Behavior change institutes
- Health and Hygiene production (sanitary pad, sanitizer, mask etc production industries)
- Information and communication about health issues
- Health and recreational institutes
- Design of healthy housing
- Food inspection
- Food production and healthy food store
- Formula milk production for malnourish children
- Sustainable approach to water and energy
- Waste management industry
- Counseling centers
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