Project Last Mile

supply and demand

Critical supply chain gaps cause medicine stock-outs in more than 40 percent of health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. PLM uses Coca-Cola’s planning and forecasting tools to manage logistics, warehouse inventory and distribution procedures.

network optimization

In Mozambique, PLM mapped over 1,500 health facilities and used data on road conditions and load requirements to design optimal routes.

storage units

Vaccines must be stored and trans- ported at specific temperatures, and refrigerator malfunctions can render vaccines ineffective. In Nigeria, PLM works with the company’s refrigeration partners to ensure effective preventative maintenance and timely repairs to health facility refrigerators.

convenient distribution

For patients living with stable chronic illnesses, traveling to a crowded health center and waiting in a long line is an enormous burden. In South Africa, PLM has supported a national program that allow patients to pick up their medicines at commercial pharmacies and other convenient locations.

demand generation

In eSwatini, PLM is utilizing the company’s marketing strategies to improve patient demand for HIV services among girls and young women, in alignment with national health plan targets.

Read the latest edition of Yale Public Health magazine.

Project Last Mile (PLM) uses the logistics and marketing expertise fine-tuned by The Coca-Cola system to strengthen health systems across Africa. Bringing together the company, the Coca-Cola Foundation, USAID, the Global Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, PLM seeks to reach 10 countries by 2020, establishing a new model for effective private-sector partnership. The Global Health Leadership Initiative (GHLI)

at Yale serves as the monitoring and evaluation partner for PLM, using a longitudinal, mixed-methods design to measure program impact over time and capture lessons learned along the way. “We hope this work can inspire other visionary partnerships for global good,” said Erika Linnander, M.P.H., M.B.A., GHLI’s director and a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health.