This piece discusses Paula Lantz’s evaluation of 11 pay-for-success initiatives focused on issues related to population health, such as homelessness, foster care, maternal and child health, family stability. Pay-for-success is a financing strategy wherein the private sector invests in a public good initiative and receives returns from the public sector when that program produces positive results. Lantz found a number of challenges to PFS programs, including little initial proof that the interventions themselves would work. Still, she sees the potential: “Local governments don’t have the bandwidth to invest in things right now that’ll only have a payoff in the future.”

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