Health and Nutrition

The dream of achieving ‘happy, healthy and safe communities’ stands at the core of the overall vision of PCI. We strive to achieve this vision by adopting holistic, multi-pronged, multi-disciplinary approaches that place ‘communities’ at the heart of all health programming. We improve community literacy on health issues, promote individual and social behaviour change for healthier practices, empower communities to generate demand for health services, ensure equitable access and distribution of health services and entitlements. In the past two decades, we have deepened our community understanding through extensive work with women and women’s groups to achieve health and nutrition outcomes.

Our work is expansive, covering the themes of Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and Nutrition, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Neglected Tropical Diseases and other Infectious Diseases including Tuberculosis and Malaria, One Health, Non-Communicable Diseases including Cancers and Strengthening Health Systems. We have extensive experience in Nutrition and Food Systems. Our strong Monitoring, Evaluation and Research team, Gender team and Climate teams ensure intersectionality within all health programs.

We provide technical assistance to the national government and several state governments on a variety of health and nutrition programs. Through our continuous engagement with policymakers and program leadership, we have contributed to policy dialogues at various levels. Our community-based programs are co-designed with target communities and implemented by leveraging and strengthening government systems.

PCI India endorses the definition that Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The solutions offered under this thematic area extend from Family Nutrition, Family Planning, maternal and child health, Neglected Tropical Diseases and Mental Health.

PCI India follows a holistic approach towards health. It offers a range of demand as well as supply side solutions for better nutrition practices, improved maternal and child health outcomes, adoption of effective family-planning practices, elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases through a unique social mobilisation approach and working towards better mental health in adolescents.

Technical Support to NRLM

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) focusing on eliminating poverty contributes to breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition and complements the efforts of other government programs which address poverty as well as food and nutrition insecurities. SHGs and their federations, under the DAY-NRLM, provide an excellent opportunity to reach the unreached, marginalized, and disadvantaged families who often go missing from the government schemes, services and entitlements. The SHG platforms not only empower women to come out of the cycle of poverty but also provide an opportunity to equip them to demand their entitlements for various public services.

In response to the NITI Aayog’s call for better convergence between departments for improved community nutrition, DAY-NRLM moved towards integrating Food Nutrition Health and WASH (FNHW) as an essential component of its Dashasutra Strategy. The Dashasutra strategy outlines the ten good principles of democratic governance, transparent microfinance operations and social development under DAY-NRLM. The inclusion of FNHW in the Dashasutra was much needed and timely step in the country’s journey towards better community nutrition and health.

PCI is the sub-grantee of the Transforming Rural India Foundation (TRIF) in this project which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Technical Support to NRLM (TA-NRLM) project commenced in January 2020 looks at two broad outcomes – (I) system strengthening (II) demonstration and scale-up. This project is designed to provide techno-managerial support to help adapt the HN integration learnings from Bihar and UP and guide the NRLM in scaling up and prioritizing HN interventions. The project further focuses on developing scale-up strategy, state-level contextualization, policy and guideline refinement, and is also responsible for ensuring adequate funding for implementation of interventions, development of processes, matrix, and systems for progress tracking etc. Under the demonstration component, intensive support on HN integration will be provided to three focus states – Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

I – System Strengthening

The national FNHW technical assistance team supports the NRLM national office and select three states to strengthen the FNHW systems. The team also supports the State TA teams to plan, streamline and coordinate field level activities in 3 focused geographies.

II – Demonstration & scale-up

Working with the State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLMs), the TA-NRLM project has identified four blocks in each state (Jharkhand, Rajasthan and MP) to provide intensive support to those blocks. Geographies have been identified based on the readiness of the community institutions, poor FNHW indicators and the absence of any other development organizations.