The second global meeting of the Health Inc project was held in Senegal between 9th and 11th November. This meeting was hosted by the Centre de Recherché sur les Politiques Sociales (CREPOS – Research Centre for Political and Social Science) in the capital city of Dakar. All partners of the Health Inc consortium attended this meeting. From IPH, the Health Inc team comprised of Dr.Devadasan N, Dr.Thriveni BS, and Dr.Tanya Seshadri.
The three day meeting began with presentation and discussion by ‘Experts by Experience’ in poverty and social exclusion from Belgium who provided insight into social exclusion from the point of view of those excluded. This enlightening start was followed by presentations from all partners regarding their localised research protocol along with challenges foreseen. While the previous meeting had allowed for discussions regarding health financing mechanisms across Ghana, Senegal, Maharashtra (India) and Karnataka (India), this time the focus was on the planning and implementation of research across the various sites. The challenge remains to develop a common skeletal protocol while allowing each team to develop protocols based on their specific context. The health financing schemes being used to study social exclusion in the African and Indian sites are National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS, Ghana), Plan Sesame (Senegal) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY – Maharashtra and Karnataka).
This meeting was followed by a two day workshop for the junior researchers from the various institutes. The workshop had the group divided into country-based teams and each team worked on developing context-specific hypotheses and initiated work on the research tools.
For further details about the project, visit the recently launched website at http://www.healthinc.eu/
Photo below shows representatives of all six partners of the Health Inc consortium under the Baobab tree (national tree of Senegal) at Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal.
