Building Inclusive participatory health Governance for tribal health in India (BIG project)
Duration of project
(01 Jan 2024 to 31 Dec 2028)
Participatory health governance refers to the various forms/levels/models of participation by communities with the State to shape the “conditions, decisions and actions for their health and wellbeing”. There is significant evidence gap in tribal health governance in India. The proposed study attempts to fill this gap by exploring what mechanisms to engage with indigenous tribal communities can work in health governance, in which contexts, through which modalities and how.
- Facilitate collaborative approaches to build further the capacity of the Sangha of Soliga tribal community to engage effectively in the district health care planning and delivery processes.
- Facilitate collaborative approaches to mobilize and build the capacity of multi-level community-led- platforms for the Jenu Kuruba Community to engage effectively in the district health care planning and delivery processes.
- Explicate the context, pathways, and social mechanisms to theorize tribal community-led initiatives on participatory health governance.
The study will be conducted in two phases in Chamarajanagar district in partnership with the Zilla Budakattu Girijana Abhivruddhi Sangha. In phase 1, through Participatory Action Research cycles (PAR) we will co-create capacity building measures and health policy engagement initiatives with the existing community platforms of the Solega tribal community in Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka. Acknowledging the distinct socio-cultural practices of tribal communities, through collaborative approaches we will also facilitate mobilization, set up and capacity building of the community-led platforms with the Jenu Kuruba community to enable participation in health governance at district and subdistrict levels. In phase 2, we will purposively select comparative cases i.e tribal community-led platforms of multiple levels for theory-based evaluation. The study will bring to fore, the key pathways and social mechanisms involved in (i.e. the science of) fostering and sustaining context-sensitive community-led collective action by the marginalised tribal communities for participatory health governance.
Principal investigator
Dr. Meena Putturaj
Collaborators
Zilla Budakattu Girijana Abhivrudhi Sangha, Chamarajanagar, Karnataka
Dr. Tanya Seshadri
Fellowship Supervisor
Dr. Prashanth NS
Mentors
Dr. Sara Van Belle, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium
Dr. Arima Mishra, Azim Premji University
Dr. Bruno Marchal, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium
Funders
DBT/WEllcome Trust India Alliance