Integration of Health and Nutrition interventions with women’s self-help group (SHG) platforms formed under the State Rural Livelihood Missions (SRLM) is one of the unique approaches conceptualized and implemented by PCI. This is considered as one of the most effective and proven scale-approaches for community-centric and demand-side intervention for Health and Nutrition (HN), which has scientific and robust evidence of bringing outcome-level changes at scale.

To test the feasibility of implementing similar interventions among JEEViKA groups, a health layering pilot was carried out by PCI in 9,089 JEEViKA SHGs in 9 additional blocks. The successful layering of HN interventions in JEEViKA SHGs enhanced the Government of Bihar’s interest in scaling up and leveraging community platforms to move the state’s health agenda forward. In response to JEEViKA and the World Bank’s request, we conceptualized JEEViKA Technical Support Program (JTSP) in 2015 to improve key reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH), nutrition, and sanitation behaviors by layering interventions onto JEEViKA’s community platforms.

JEEViKA with the technical support of JTSP brought substantial changes in the lives of women and children of millions of marginalized families by bringing significant differences in multiple critical outcome indicators related to HN. The two approaches increased adoption of key maternal, newborn and child health, nutrition, and sanitation behaviours among women of reproductive age through sustained social and behaviour change (SBC) and convergence with other departments have created a pivotal opportunity to accelerate progress towards achieving results in multiple HN indicators.

With time, this model has shown outstanding results and has been taken up by the Government to a very large scale implementation across various states in India and influencing millions of marginalized families throughout the country.