Current Projects under Public Health Programme
Project Title: Restoring health services for post-pandemic recovery of health systems by building capacities of grassroot teams in rural and urban communities of Maharashtra, Araria, Katihar, and Saharsa districts of Bihar.
Project Period: 1st June 2023 to 31st May 2024
Donor Agency: Association for India’s Development (AID)
SATHI focuses on specific rural and urban health institutions and processes to enhance access to health services. The organization has initiated community-level dialogues between health functionaries and the public, with the goal of highlighting community perceptions of health services in meetings with health officials.
Objectives:
- To build a cadre of health activists from the village to the district level who will act as bridge and will enable local communities to access public health services.
- To increase the capacity of health activists to understand nuances of the health system.
- To enable activists to negotiate with local public health services, identify service and accountability gaps.
Project Title: Amplify accountability issues in the private and corporate health sector, and the SRHR, at the national and the South Asia level.
Project Period: 25th January 2023 to 30th September 2024
Donor Agency: Population Action International (PAI)
This grant is to amplify accountability issues in the private and corporate health sectors, and specific to SRHR, at the national and the South Asia regional levels.
Objectives:
- To crystallize pandemic lessons and strengthen the agenda of regulation and accountability of the private health sector at the state and national level in the post-pandemic recovery phase,
- To identify and train organizations and individuals in the South Asian region to work on private and corporate health sector accountability and,
- To regularly disseminate HARPS knowledge products like reports, case studies, and research among relevant national, regional, and global platforms and networks.
Project Title: Strengthening Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition services through Women’s Group participation
Project Period: 15th January 2023 to 15th April 2026
Donor Agency: Bajaj Housing Finance Ltd.
Strengthening access to maternal and child health nutrition services in the tribal area of four districts of Maharashtra by empowering local community, thereby improving ANC, PNC care and reducing malnutrition.
Objectives:
- To improve awareness of ANC-PNC, government schemes and nutrition services.
- To improve access to Public Health and Nutritional Services by empowering the community through local interventions.
- To tackle malnutrition between the age group of 0 to 3 years.
Project Title: Improving maternal health and nutrition services for urban poor in Pune City.
Project Period: 5th July 2022 to 4th October 2024
Donor Agency: Bajaj Finserv Limited
This project empowers pregnant and lactating women by improving awareness about public health and nutrition services, and increasing access to these services through local interventions.
To enable this, a project orientation workshop was conducted for officers and other community level stakeholders to enlist their involvement in the project including frontline service providers ANM, Anaganwadi , and ASHA workers, in the selected slum areas.
Beneficiary groups include pregnant and lactating women, and their relatives or family members. Beneficiaries receive awareness and training about available health and nutrition services, role of different stakeholders who can assist with access to healthcare services, and relevant forms for applying to entitled scheme benefits. Training and awareness raising also include visits by beneficiary groups to nearest PMC health centre and local Anganwadi centre, to understand the actual services and schemes. Other community awareness campaigns include enhanced awareness of health and nutrition services, available schemes, vaccination and anaemia campaign, ANC/PNC services, breast feeding practices, best food and recipe practices, and food demonstrations.
Monthly meetings with beneficiary groups help to track health and nutrition services they are availing, and contribute to improving regular ANC and PNC services.
Expected Outcomes:
- Improvement in access to health services for 600 ANC & PNC mothers and 600 infants as direct beneficiaries.
- 30% increase in number of ANC check-ups.
- Improved coordination between Pune municipal health officials, frontline workers, and beneficiaries, regarding access to maternal health services and scheme.
Project Title: To Build organisational sustainability and future Readiness..
Project Period: April 2022 to March 2024
Donor Agency: GROW FUNDS- EdelGive Foundation
SATHI is a high impact organisation working in the health sector, capable of developing transformative community health programs focusing on entitlements, and improving access to health care, liasoning and working at various levels of the public system- from PHC to state-level policy-making, and playing a lead role in shaping national level processes like community-based monitoring of health services and decentralised health planning.
SATHI uses the support from GROW funds for crucial reinventing of modes of organisational sustenance and functioning in view of the pandemic experience, while equipping the organisation to deal with the post-pandemic scenario. Some project activities supported by this fund are:
- Strengthening SATHI communication strategy by hiring communication officer and upgrading staff skills on using multimedia and story-based techniques. (348 words)
- Organising expert consultations, and engaging domain expert for domestic fundraising.
- Developing SATHI program strategy by foregrounding pandemic experience and insights from community interventions.
- Upgrading technological and communication infrastructure and access to knowledge management tools.
- Strengthening SATHI action research by identifying data needs, accessing specialised data sources, and international knowledge resources.
- Reviewing and upgrading programmatic and fundraising strategies.
Though SATHI has been providing technical and knowledge inputs to various organisations, this is an opportune time to fully evolve into a resource organisation working in the health sector at state and national levels. Given the pandemic experience, healthcare has re-emerged as a global and national priority; this project support will critically help distil organisational and programmatic learnings during the pandemic, revisit program assumptions, and develop effective strategies to shape future work.
For SATHI, a successful strategy is not just a premeditated plan or rigid set of instructions, but a program design that evolves in the context of changing conditions.
Project Title: Community Action for Health (CAH)
Project period : April 2022 to March 2024
Donor Agency : National Health Mission (NHM), Maharashtra
The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in 2005 with the goal of improving the availability of, and access to quality health care for people, especially for residents in rural areas, the poor, women, and children. Community Based Monitoring and Planning (CBMP) was introduced as an important component, to ensure that services reach those for whom they are meant. It was an outcome of consistent effort taken by Jan Swasthya Abhiyan.
Community Based Monitoring is also as an essential aspect of promoting accountability & community led action in the field of health. The process includes outreach services, public health facilities and the referral system. It is assumed that, the most relevant input on what, where and how health services are needed and should be provided or improved, can be given most efficiently by the users/ beneficiaries of the services themselves. Community based monitoring places people at the centre of the process. Community Based organizations (CBOs), people’s movements, non-government organizations and Panchayat representatives monitor demand/need, coverage, access, quality, effectiveness, behavior, and presence of health care personnel at service points, possible denial of care and negligence, and give direct feedback about the functioning of public health services, including inputs for improvement. This has enabled people’s participation in monitoring health resources and direct dialogue with health officials. The platform ensures accountable and transparent practices.
Objectives of CAH
- To provide regular and systematic information about community needs, that guide the planning process appropriately.
- To provide feedback according to locally developed yardsticks, as well as on some key indicators.
- To provide feedback on the status of fulfilment of entitlements, functioning of various levels of public health system and service providers, identifying gaps, deficiencies in services, and levels of community satisfaction, to facilitate corrective action in a framework of accountability.
- To enable community and community-based organizations to become equal partners in the health planning process. It would increase the community’s sense of involvement and participation to improve responsive functioning of the public health system.
Scope and structure of CAH
Maharashtra is one of nine selected Indian states for implementation of CBMP. Five districts in Maharashtra were included in the first phase, which was expanded to cover eight districts in the second phase of CBMP. Currently CAH is successfully implemented in 17 districts by SATHI and STAPI as an SNGO.
Involved stakeholders include representatives of Health Officials, Panchayat Raj, Community Based Organizations/ NGOs/ Peoples Movements and VHSNC members, PHC & Block federations, District level committee members as DMRG, also SMC as State level committee.
Key Activities
- Publications- Preparation of tools, data collection formats, training, orientation and awareness materials like brochure, guidebook and documentation format.
- Formation of District Monitoring and Planning Committee (DM&PC), which plays an important role for district level intervention.
- State level workshop and training of trainers (ToT)- Training of CAH field team at different levels.
- District level workshop and trainings for Formation of District Mentoring Team, and training of block coordinators for implementation of community-based activities.
- Formation of Jan Arogy Samitee’s (JAS) members federations at HWC and block level.
- Orientation and training of all JAS members at both levels.
- Jansanvad- HWC, Block and district level Community actions exercises include a Public Dialogue (Jan Sanvad) or Public Hearing (Jan Sunwai) process once or twice in the year in each Block.
SATHI as State Nodal NGO
SATHI- Action Center of ANUSANDHAN TRUST has responsibility to work as a state nodal NGO for this project, providing training material like guidebook, posters, tools for data collection and state level coordination with Government of Maharashtra, as well as intervention with districts nodal NGOs for implementation of Community action for health activities.
District Nodal NGOs
Selected NGOs have taken responsibility for activities in the target districts. The following organizations have worked as district nodal NGOs in selected communities:
Current Phase
- Aurangabad – Marathwada Gramin Vikas Sanstha (MGVS)
- Beed – Manavlok (Marathwada Navnirman Lokayat)
- Kolhapur – Samvad
- Osmanabad – Halo Medical Foundation
- Pune- SATHI Sanstha
- Solapur – Astitva Samaj Vikas & Sanshodhan Sanstha
- Sangali – Sampada Gramin Mahila Sanstha [SANGRAM]
- Yawatmal- Rasikashray sanstha.
Project Title: Equitable Health Systems for the Post Covid World: Using Narrative Strategies to Develop Popular Discourse on Universal Health Care, Strengthening Public Healthcare, and Regulation of the Private Health Sector.
Project Period: January 2022 to December 2023, extended upto June 2024
Donor Agency: WEMOS
While pandemic-related academic and epidemiological research is abundant, there is undoubtedly a dearth of narrative analysis that captures people’s stories. Almost every house in India has a Covid – 19 story to tell. These stories are predominantly about who died, who was exploited in the hospital, who took a bribe, and who can help get a vaccine; a mindboggling variety of distress experiences.
Predictably, the massive state machinery is out to control the narrative, and hide its abject failure in protecting citizens. The contestation is to fix the meaning of the pandemic experience. We at SATHI, believe this is an opportune time to work on health narratives, to enhance the effectiveness of our work on transparency, accountability and governance. We endeavour to combine extended individual monologues related to experiences of seeking health care during the pandemic, and create a collage of voices to puncture the dominant narrative that abdicates the government of gross neglect.
We seek to work on equitable health systems for the post-Covid world, using narrative strategies to change discourse on universal health care, for strengthening public healthcare, and regulating the private health sector.
Three broad objectives:
- To develop a grounded, people-centred counter-narratives that questions the existing state of healthcare and health policymaking.
- To generate community-level evidence for promoting the development of UHC system in India.
- To contribute to developing a regional and global south counter-narrative on privatisation and commercialisation of healthcare.