The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded Management Sciences for Health its five-year Strengthening Pharmaceutical Systems (SPS) Program in 2007, which began the Center for Pharmaceutical Management’s 15th year of support to USAID priority health programs.

This support started in 1992 with the original Rational Pharmaceutical Management (RPM) Project, which comprised USAID cooperative agreements with MSH and with the U.S. Pharmcopeial Convention. RPM’s goal was to improve the efficiency, equity, and quality of pharmaceutical management in developing countries by promoting improvements in the allocation and use of resources. The RPM Project focused on improving allocation, management, and use of resources; promoting the rational use of medicines; and improving the level of medicine information.

The follow-on to the RPM Project was the RPM Plus Program, which began in 2000 and ran for eight years. RPM Plus greatly expanded its scope of work, including shifting much of its short-term technical assistance in strengthening pharmaceutical systems from headquarters to the field and providing technical leadership in a number of global health initiatives. In addition, RPM Plus has been pivotal in addressing gaps in the management and availability of essential medicines and health commodities needed to scale-up public health treatment programs for infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

The SPS Program builds on the lessons learned in the RPM Plus Program by scaling up successful existing programs nationwide or adapting them for use in other countries. New areas receiving special focus under SPS include good governance in the pharmaceutical sector, pharmaceutical care, pharmacovigilance, laboratory services, health financing, and innovative mechanisms to enhance access to medicines.