Health
All projects

Estimating the extent of mobility among PLHIV and TB in South Africa and its effect on treatment outcomes
Through literature reviews and key informant interviews, Genesis Analytics explored why individuals disengage from HIV and TB treatment, uncovering critical insights on policy gaps, administrative burdens, and stigma-related barriers. You can view the final report here

Advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in Asia Pacific
Building on a 2021 review, Genesis was contracted by the United Nations Population Fund to assess the integration of Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) rights and services into the ongoing Universal Health Coverage (UHC) expansion efforts in the Asia Pacific region.

How gender barriers hamper immunisation in India
Genesis is supporting UNICEF India to analyse how gender differentials in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Bihar are impacting the effectiveness of immunisation efforts. The initiative is part of our long-term agreement to provide behavioural sciences services to UNICEF.

Optimising Global Fund’s Grant Cycle 7
Genesis Analytics, in collaboration with Euro Health Group (EHG), will conduct quantitative secondary data analysis of existing internal and external Global Fund (GF) datasets to identify key data, drivers and barriers related to the Funding Request and Grant-Making (FR-GM) stages for Grant Cycle 7 (GC7). Each dataset will be assessed for its utility, relevance, completeness and quality.
How i2i is improving HIV prevention efforts in Africa
As a partner in the South to South Learning Network’s (SSLN) insight 2 implementation (i2i) project, Genesis is key to efforts to use the best available evidence to inform and improve HIV prevention policies and practices in 15 African countries.

Study evaluates TB patients’ out-of-pocket expenditure
Genesis Analytics was contracted by the East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC) to act as one of the regional coordinating partners on a study to estimate and analyse the out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) that TB patients in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia incur when accessing health services.

Health metrics catalogue for sustainability planning
As countries work to reach the goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, planning and action is urgently needed for sustaining HIV response gains beyond 2030. New guidance from UNAIDS in 2024 encourages all HIV burdened countries to develop HIV Response Sustainability Roadmaps with appropriate indicators to measure progress.

Analysis yields more health for money in fight against HIV
Genesis was asked by the South African National Department of Health to assist its HIV/AIDS Conditional Grant Unit, which allocates R30 billion of funding annually to provincial health departments, to identify and realise the efficiency savings and optimisation required to achieve and maintain control of the HIV epidemic.

UN workshop on financing health and rights initiatives
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Asia and Pacific Regional Office (APRO) contracted Genesis to organise a four-day in-person workshop to enhance participants’ capacity to engage in strategic policy dialogues on financing for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR).

Support for HIV prevention teams focused on AGYW
Genesis has been contracted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is working with the Population Council to synthesise and contextualise evidence to guide countries in managing and implementing comprehensive HIV prevention responses for AGYW.

Genesis team to boost TB recovery plan after Covid-19 setbacks
Genesis Analytics, through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to build the capacity of the Department of Health to fast-track the effective implementation of the TB Recovery Plan to ensure an effective transition to the new National TB Programme Strategic Plan 2023-2028.

Exploring microarray patches for HIV prevention in SA
Genesis Analytics partnered with PATH to explore the acceptability, programmatic fit and usability of microarray patches (MAPs) as an alternative delivery mechanism for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) in South Africa.

Improving the mentorship of AGYW in HIV prevention programmes
Genesis was contracted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to assist in providing support to the assessment of PEPFAR’s DREAMS and the Global Fund’s mentoring component of their adolescent girls and young women’s HIV prevention programmes.

Looking for ways to improve AGYW programming in East and Southern Africa
Genesis has been contracted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to synthesise and contextualise evidence to guide countries in managing and implementing comprehensive HIV prevention responses for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW).

Working for PrEP acceptance in SA community health-worker programme
Genesis Analytics, on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, conducted a qualitative landscape analysis of the policy and implementation environment for community-based services in South Africa to inform the sustainable planning and implementation of their investments.

Dashboard supports Covid vaccine roll-out in South Africa
Despite progress in rolling out the Covid-19 vaccination programme in South Africa, there are still millions of vulnerable individuals who have not yet been vaccinated. There is a need to implement targeted interventions, per population group and geography, to increase national vaccination coverage.

Getting South Africans vaccinated: The #RollUpYourSleeves Campaign
Despite initial enthusiasm for the Covid-19 vaccine, vaccine hesitancy remains a significant obstacle in South Africa. This has left millions of vulnerable South Africans unvaccinated and threatens to create a situation where there are continuing waves of Covid infections.

Opportunity to transform public healthcare service delivery in Ghana
Genesis Analytics partnered with a private foundation, and key stakeholders in the public, private and NGO sectors in Ghana to develop a transformational vision for the use of digital technologies, especially in the north of the country, which suffers serious backlogs in terms of healthcare services and health indicators.

Facilitating continuous learning for AI health research collaborative
Genesis Analytics has been contracted to support the International Digital Health & AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) through a developmental evaluation (DE). Unlike the traditional formative or summative evaluations, DEs facilitate real-time or close-time feedback loops, facilitating a continuous learning cycle.

Assessing performance of family planning financing
Genesis conducted family-planning performance assessment for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to identify key improvement areas in family-planning financing for three countries and created a tool that supports alignment between the foundation’s health and family-planning financing strategies.

Counting the health costs of VAT on soap in Madagascar
Genesis Analytics partnered with UNICEF and the Government in Madagascar to evaluate whether an exemption in the value-added tax on soap would increase access to soap and achieve better WASH-related outcomes, and drive tax policy decision-making based on the recommendations derived from the evaluation.

Sustainable financing for SA’s school health programme
The Integrated School Health Programme (ISHP) in South Africa has faced persistent challenges over the years, marked by inadequate and inequitable resource allocation and limited capacity to address the diverse health needs of young people across different school phases and regions.

Developing sustainability framework for HIV and TB in SA
Genesis Analytics was contracted by the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) Secretariat and the Global Fund to support stakeholders in developing a national sustainability framework, assessments and action plans to guide the sustainability planning process for HIV and TB programmes in South Africa.

A mobile solution to supporting HIV treatment adherence
MenConnect is an innovative approach to supporting HIV treatment initiation and adherence among men living with HIV in South Africa. Genesis was responsible for crafting behaviourally informed messages that are timed to the treatment journey milestones and tailored per psychographic segment.

Self-assessment tool to measure HIV programmes against global standard
Genesis Analytics was contracted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a tool that could help countries to define the performance of their HIV programmes against a global standardised set of programmatic components.

Looking for best practice in HIV prevention for young women
Genesis was appointed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work with key country stakeholders to consolidate and synthesise research findings and review the implementation of best practices of adolescent girls and young women HIV prevention programmes in South Africa.

Genesis assists in forecasting resources needed for HIV and TB plan
Genesis was appointed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide technical assistance to the Mpumalanga Provincial AIDS Council in costing the interventions in their Implementation Plan for HIV, TB and STIs (PIP) and forecasting the financial resource needs over the five-year period.

Monitoring inclusion on male sex-partners in HIV prevention
Genesis Analytics was contracted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to document the extent to which research with male sexual partners (MSPs) had been undertaken as part of the DREAMS programme, the methods used, and the use of results to inform programming in 10 high-burden countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Innovative solution to improve access and ease of chronic care
Genesis supported the Cipla Foundation in an innovative solution to expand the footprint of Centralised Chronic Medicines Dispensing Distribution (CCMDD) locations as a solution for chronic patients to pick up their medicines from decentralised locations.

Ensuring the greatest impact of Covid relief funds in SA
The Solidarity Fund was set up in March 2020 to fund a range of initiatives that addressed the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded Genesis Analytics to provide extensive and wide-ranging technical support for the fund to ensure that the investments made by the fund had the greatest possible impact.

Strengthening HIV prevention through peer learning
Genesis, in partnership with the University of Manitoba, is implementing the South to South HIV Prevention Learning Network (SSLN), which supports peer learning in a network structure to improve HIV prevention programming in 15 African countries.

Study evaluates TB patients’ out-of-pocket expenditure
Genesis Analytics was contracted by the East, Central and Southern Africa Health Community (ECSA-HC) to act as one of the regional coordinating partners on a study to estimate and analyse the out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE) that TB patients in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia incur when accessing health services.

Genesis helps business to return to work safely after lockdown
Genesis was retained by the Public-Private Growth Initiative (PPGI) to demystify and increase adherence to regulations on how to re-open the economy safely after lockdown and to remain open using insights from behavioural economics.

Improving the accurate costing of HIV programmes in Africa
Genesis has been awarded a contract to undertake a number of learning activities that will improve countries’ abilities to accurately cost their HIV programmes, using national data systems, and interpret existing cost data, thereby enabling more effective planning, budgeting and ongoing decision-making.

Tools to measure success of global bilharzia treatment programme
Merck contracted Genesis to develop programme key performance indicators (KPIs) and an M&E framework to efficiently monitor correct tablet distribution and use at country and community levels of its anti-bilharzia drug Praziquantel (PZQ). Merck has provided nearly one billion PZQ tablets to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which then distributes these to countries for mass drug administration in endemic areas.

Persuasive conversations increase HIV prevention uptake by 29%
Medical male circumcision (MMC) is a low-cost, effective HIV prevention method, reducing female-to-male transmission by about 60%. But getting men to circumcise requires more than making services available. Many men do not follow through by booking for an MMC procedure, despite clearly indicating an intention to do so.

Behaviourally informed messaging increases medication adherence
Genesis Analytics was commissioned by PPO Serve to help improve medication adherence among HIV-positive patients enrolled on the GP Care Cell (GPCC) programme. The programme offers free HIV treatment through a network of private GPs.

Improving SA's largest HIV prevention programme with behavioural economics
Genesis Analytics and the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) have been commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide technical assistance to the South African Department of Health (DOH) to support the delivery of a key HIV prevention programme - the national Medical Male Circumcision (MMC) Programme.

Evaluating NHI Phase 1 pilot implementation for Department of Health
Genesis undertook the evaluation of the Phase 1 implementation of the government’s policy of National Health Insurance (NHI) in South Africa. The main aim was to assess whether the NHI Phase 1 interventions had achieved their objective of health system strengthening in primary health care facilities.

Scaling up male circumcision in SA to prevent HIV infections
Genesis was awarded three-year contract from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide technical assistance to the South African national medical male circumcision (MMC) programme to build resilient local systems that successfully plan, effectively manage and efficiently execute the programme at scale, and transition MMC toward sustainability in South Africa.

Genesis co-manages UNAIDS Technical Support Mechanism
Genesis Analytics as part of the Oxford Policy Management-led consortium is tasked with managing all operations of the Technical Support Mechanism (TSM) in the East and Southern Africa region. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) established the project to support the provision of high-quality technical assistance in East and Southern Africa (ESA), Asia-Pacific (AP), and West and Central Africa (WCA).

Sexual and reproductive services will improve health of SA's youth
Genesis Analytics supported the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to investigate the understanding, accessibility and acceptability of providing sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services to boys and girls attending school in South Africa.

Assessing impact of family planning programme for Kenyan girls
Genesis was contracted to conduct a rapid impact assessment of the Choice for Change (C4C) family planning programme in Kenya targeting adolescent girls. Choice for Change is a CIFF-funded initiative, though implemented through Marie Stopes Kenya (MSK), IPAS and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Developing an HIV and TB communication strategy for SA government
Genesis, in partnership with the Centre for Communication Impact, was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the South African National Department of Health in developing a communications strategy to address HIV, TB and the associated risk factors and comorbidities.

Genesis counts cost of lifestyle diseases for Gauteng government
The Gauteng Office of the Premier’s Planning Division contracted Genesis Analytics to determine the health and financial effects of non-communicable diseases on Gauteng’s health system for 2017-2030 and to recommend policies and best practices to address the growing burden in Gauteng.

Raising the drinking age to 21: Pros and cons
The National Economic and Development Labour Council (Nedlac) commissioned Genesis Analytics to conduct an urgent independent study on the likely economic, health and social impacts of some of the amendments proposed in the Liquor Amendment Bill, 2017.

Campaign does improve men's perceptions on HIV testing
South Africans (18-34 years) who are exposed to the Testa Boy campaign are 50% more likely to agree that men who test for HIV are strong and responsible, according to a study done by Genesis Analytics for the Centre for Communication Impact.

Pricing study for private eye care practice
Genesis Analytics was contracted to evaluate a private healthcare practice’s baseline cost structures and practice operations, determine whether global fees for disease management appropriately recover their costs, and to assist with pricing strategy and evaluation.

South Africans more aware of risks of sugary drinks
Genesis was contracted to do a baseline and follow-up evaluation of the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) campaign “Are you drinking yourself sick?”, which was aimed at reducing sugary-drinks consumption and promoting support for the sugar tax.

SA cities sign up to meet 90-90-90 targets
UNAIDS contracted Genesis to support the meeting of 19 South African municipalities to implement its 90-90-90 project that assists countries to control the HIV epidemic by setting ambitious targets to get people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and ensure they are virally suppressed.

Regulation of medicine dispensing fee in pharmacies
Genesis has worked extensively with the Pharmacy Stakeholders Forum of South Africa (PSF) in its protracted litigation with the Department of Health regarding price regulation of the dispensing fee for medicines sold through pharmacies. The central question was whether the dispensing fees prescribed by the Department of Health were sufficient to provide a reasonable revenue stream to community pharmacies so as ensure the viability of the businesses.

Protecting sex workers in Mpumalanga
For this project we conducted extensive research in the Gert Sibande District in Mpumalanga, which showed that many young women engaged in commercial sex work and transactional sex. This is as a result of very high unemployment levels among women in the area. It is also probably the reason why HIV infection levels in this area are among the highest in the country.

HIV prevention strategy for the Gates Foundation
The HIV prevention field is changing rapidly as treatment becomes widely available and as new prevention technologies reach the market. The BMGF commits significant funding to healthcare and HIV, and needs to decide whether its strategic focus areas are appropriate in this changing landscape.

HPCSA vs Buchanan
Whether corporate ownership of healthcare providers can improve efficiency and lower prices is a hotly contested topic in the healthcare sector. In this case an individual who operated a large franchise of optometrists put this topic on trial. The person lodged a competition law complaint that the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) was involved in a restrictive horizontal practice by not permitting corporate ownership. Genesis was retained by the HPCSA to provide an expert economic view of whether this was the case.

Expert advice on setting doctor's tariffs
Genesis was commissioned to provide expert economic advice and a report for the South African Private Practitioners’ Forum (SAPPF) in support of its response to a request for comments on the proposed guideline tariffs for medical practitioners and dentists made by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

Expert evidence in Bonitas/Pro Sano merger
Genesis was retained by the parties involved to provide a competitive assessment of the proposed merger of Bonitas and Pro Sano for filing with Competition Commission. The project team’s input was critical in helping them to demonstrate that the proposed amalgamation would have a minimal impact on competition in the medical schemes industry and supported the pro-competitive rationale for the proposed move. The parties obtained merger approval from the Commission promptly. This mitigated solvency concerns for Pro Sano.

The National HIV Communication Survey
There are many HIV communication campaigns running in South Africa and many have overlapping objectives. However, funders need to know whether these campaigns are working, in which areas they are working, and what to continue with and what to stop or change.

Assessment of damages claimed by 3M South Africa
Genesis was retained by a small healthcare products company, Bestcare, to assess the damages incurred following the termination of a supply contract by a large multinational supplier, 3M. The project team used before and after quantification techniques to determine the change in revenue that resulted from the termination of the contract for both private hospital supply contracts and public tenders. Through a careful financial analysis of the Bestcare’s cost structure, the team was also able to accurately determine potential cost reductions in order to quantify lost profits.

Impact analysis of new healthcare insurance
Genesis played a central role in the debate in modelling the fiscal implications of the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) policy when it assisted one of the largest healthcare service providers in South Africa in calculating the likely spill over effects for the labour market

Impact of tariff regulation on private hospitals
Genesis was appointed to assess the potential impact of a proposal by the Department of Health to regulate tariff negotiations between hospitals and medical schemes, as well as to permit the use of National Health Reference Price List (NHRPL) prices as a default in the event of no agreement being reached.

Successful exemption for over-the-counter medicines
Genesis was retained to provide an expert economic report for the Self-Medication Association of South Africa (SMASA), which formed the basis of its successful application for the exclusion of over-the-counter medicines from price regulation.