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Living Goods, a social enterprise based in San Francisco, has built a network of door-to-door salespeople in Uganda A dose of competition is sometimes what's required to get life-saving medicines and other needed products to urban slum dwellers and the rural poor. Drugs to treat malaria, for example, are a recurring necessity in towns like this one east of Kampala. Uganda has an estimated 478 cases of malaria per 1,000 people per year, one of the highest rates in the world. Infections are treatable with the right drugs, so-called artemisinin-based combination therapy, or ACT. But those drugs...

A social enterprise is helping commissioners take a new approach and involve patients more in the process Health shouldn't be about numbers. It should be about people. To fundamentally change health outcomes, we need to change the way we commission. I set up Georgina Craig Associates (GCA) – a social enterprise – in 2009 to drive that change, with the aim of influencing commissioners to think long term and in a more person-centred way. GCA works in partnership with academic centres of excellence, commercial organisations, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and providers, the voluntary sector...

Allison Ogden-Newton fears that social enterprises with local knowledge will lose out to larger deliverers who can achieve scale The government's target of enabling over one million former public sector staff to achieve mutual status by 2015 echoes the aspirations of many in the public sector who want to carry on doing the job they love and are interested in more independence – but only if the deal is right. For them, the choice between moving, via the TUPE process, to work for a large listed company with a reputation for stacking it high and selling it cheap, or clubbing together with trusted...

The push by local councils to outsource services is proving a boon for the social enterprise sector As councils across the country sell vast chunks of social care, state services are increasingly offered by private contractors suffering from low pay, long working hours and high turnover. Many local authorities feel they are left with little option . The alternative that has emerged is social enterprise. And in the social care sector, social enterprises are increasingly competing on price with the private sector while out-performing on quality. Social enterprise within social care is not a new phenomenon...

Philip Greenhill, managing director of a social enterprise that provides NHS funded community health services, shares his proudest achievement and what keeps him awake at night Describe your role in one sentence I am managing director of a social enterprise that provides NHS funded community health services in east Surrey and parts of Sussex. Why did you want to work in healthcare? I wanted to work in a sector where I could contribute to addressing inequalities in our society. How do you want to see the sector change in the next five years? I would like to see much more integration across health...

Simon Birch looks at how a growing number of heathcare co-operatives are emerging as a viable alternative to traditional private providers With the coalition government intent on prising open up the NHS to competition, the growing number of co-ops delivering healthcare services are now proving that there is a viable alternative to the private shareholder-led providers. The latest figures from Co-ops UK , the trade body representing the co-operative economy, show that there are currently just under one thousand healthcare co-ops operating within the NHS with a combined turnover of over £600m. One...

As a private sector company gets set to take over £140m of community healthcare contracts, a local councillor explores what it will mean for patients in Suffolk NHS Suffolk recently announced that it has chosen Serco to run £140m of community healthcare contracts in Suffolk . This includes community hospitals, district nurses, specialist dentistry and a range of other non-acute services. Serco will be working with a variety of partners, among these South Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust and Bedford Community Dentistry, a community interest company. In my role as a local councillor...