Every Indian Citizen irrespective of whether it is a man or a woman, irrespective of his/her economic condition, caste, religion, social status, and regional affiliation – must have access to good quality health services. This years budget allocation under National Rural Health Mission increased by Rs 2,057 crores to a total of Rs.12,070 crores. The NRHM is undoubtedly one of the pioneering health initiatives India had ever had but then there are some chasms which hinder the fulfillment of its objectives and goals. This can be elucidated from the fact that the proportion of the services provided and the services availed are not in alignment with each other.

Therefore CHIN for CHANGE project has come about to bridge exactly this gap through a participatory communication initiative for improving access to public healthcare services for rural communities in India under NRHM.

(CHIN denotes Communication for Health India Network and

CHANGE – Communication for
Health
Advocacy
NRHM for
Grassroot
Empowerment)

The CHIN partnership consists of 5 partners: CINI (Child in Need Institute) Kolkata, West Bengal, CHETNA (Centre of Health Education Training and Nutrition Awareness), Gujarat, CMAI (Christian Medical Association of India), New Delhi, RUSHA (Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs of Christian Medical College) Vellore and Healthlink Worldwide,UK. For this project, CMAI will be the lead partner. This project intends to build the capacity of community members, community organizations and the public health providers in communicating their needs, entitlements and challenges so that the public is able to demand and receive their entitlements as promised under the National Rural Health Mission.

The overall goal of the project is that communities in the four states of West Bengal, Gujarat, Orissa and Tamil Nadu have access to quality public health services through a process of community mobilization through effective use of participatory communication techniques under the NRHM of the Government of India.

The objectives are:

1. Development of a participatory communication strategy (including communication packages) to advocate for health entitlements of      rural communities.
   
2. To enhance the capacity of the service providers, civil society organizations, media and PRI on communicating and advocating for NRHM entitlements.
   
3. To promote community awareness on NRHM entitlements.
   
4. Forums/round tables among various stakeholders formed to promote exchange of experiences, innovations, learning and challenges.
   
5. Key processes and learning documented and disseminated.

The project design is as follows:

• Work will be first started in 5 districts.

• One block-the work will be intensive.

• Put in place strategies for learning in other blocks in the districts.

• Engage with the local district government machinery and the rural populations by addressing the communication barriers from both the demand and supply sides.

The strategy of the project will be:

• Development of participatory communication strategies with service providers and users through an evidence based action research approach.

• Capacity building of local stakeholders in the intervention block (community leaders, community based organizations, NGOs, media groups and other stakeholders), in health communications for social change tools - QUEST and Communicating for Advocacy (CFA).

• Supporting health care providers at the village, block and district levels through a process of appreciative enquiry.

• Creating “spaces for dialogues and learning” among different stakeholders eg. policymakers, health centre staff, PRIs, NGOs, community health workers and community members.

• Forging partnership between CHIN partners and national and state governments, working alongside at different levels with the same guiding principles of NRHM in order to complement the government’s initiatives.

• Documenting the lessons learned from each of the states where the intervention is carried out, and positively influencing government in scaling up of the strategies.

The implementing agencies including Health Department members of BISWA underwent rigorous training at CYSD Bhuwaneswar from 7/7/09 to 10/7/09 for the initiation and baseline survey of the project. Ms. Anuradha Gupta is the District facilitator for the project from BISWA and the other team members include Mr. B.S. Mishra (Manager Health), Dr Rajaram Sarangi (Doctor), Mr. Ashish Panda (Deputy Manager Health) and Mr. Suryanarayan Mohapatra (Assistant Manager).

Through lot method BISWA was assigned low performing block of Jujumura during the training as the operational area and as per the instructions and guidelines of CMAI the villages for the baseline survey was drawn as per the list of the revenue villages by lot method too.

UNFOLDING SESSION OF THE PROJECT CHIN FOR CHANGE

The minutes of the unfolding session are attached herewith.
Unfolding Session Report Covert (60.16 kB)