Oral health is a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of overall health. Dental care in India faces significant challenges, of the concentration of dentists in urban areas and high out-of-pocket costs. The project, DHARANI, seeks to identify gaps in dental healthcare access in rural, urban, and tribal areas of Chamarajanagar and Mysore districts in Karnataka and develop a framework to integrate oral care into primary healthcare.

The project is structured into four phases—formative, pilot, implementation, and evaluation as guided by the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework. Key activities include dental health access research, stakeholder engagements, capacity strengthening, and service delivery through collaborating institutes in the Chamarajanagar and Mysore districts of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.  Through DHARANI, we aim to strengthen the National Oral Health Program (NOHP) by developing and refining a framework to integrate oral health into primary health care.

This research study is supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research for Intermediate Grant Research awarded to Dr. Pragati B Hebbar (ICMR project ID: IIRPIG-2023-0001466).
For more information contact pragati@iphindia.org