Reflections on “Orchestrating for Impact”: Harmonizing across Stakeholders to Accelerate Global Health Gains

For developing countries and partners to accelerate the availability of new innovations to communities in need of intervention, it is necessary to find improved ways to work together that challenge today’s status quo in global health. By adopting new approaches and accepting shared risk and reward, diverse partners can work together to accelerate progress toward a common global health goal. A symphony orchestra—with a conductor who recruits, arranges, harmonizes, and orchestrates diverse musicians to work together to create something not possible by individual musicians on their own—provides an apt metaphor for successful global health initiatives. In such settings, stakeholders must be engaged and harmonized, workplans composed, and partnerships conducted such that all stakeholder roles progress from workplans that are sequential and independent to those that are integrated and interactive. Reflecting on the successful global health partnerships discussed here and beyond, we use this orchestral metaphor to illustrate the elements needed to make partnerships increasingly successful.