Health equity in India requires a dedicated effort to identify and address the socioeconomic challenges that prevent the poor and marginalised from getting the health care that they need. At the Centre, we believe that the challenge of producing health equity is often neglected in efforts to enhance medical and health research and infrastructure. We bring focus to the ways in which gender and other sources of inequality – such as class, caste, location, disability and so on – determine health care related decision making, access to health resources and institutions. The purpose of our centre is to build evidence on, and develop strategies to address, such non-medical factors that determine health outcomes, broadly referred to as the social determinants of health (SDH). 

In the past decade we have, inter alia: 

• Developed new frameworks to study and evaluate maternal health and built evidence around respectful maternity care. We are now translating this work into a training programme for health workers in collaboration with the Government of Karnataka; 

• Developed and applied a pathbreaking conceptualisation of, and methodology to measure, women’s health and well-being in collaboration with the Hospital for Sick Kids, Toronto and others, that is multi-dimensional and dynamic to accommodate changes over the life-course; 

• Investigated the drivers of adolescent health, and worked with the Tamil Nadu Health Systems Reform Programme and the World Bank to develop an evidence-driven strategy for bringing about sustainable improvements in adolescent sexual, reproductive and mental health; 

• Evaluated promising practices in integrating gender into government programmes, in partnership with the UN University-International Institute for Gender and Health, and conducted policy dialogues bringing together government functionaries, civil society actors, community members and other researchers to disseminate the findings and catalyse systemic change through our study of incorporating gender in medical education in Maharashtra and Karnataka or access to health services by transgender populations in Tamil Nadu; 

• Traced the social and ecological drivers of changing food systems and nutritional outcomes of Adivasi populations in collaboration with faculty at the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal and others; 

• Trained field workers, programme managers and policy makers across several geographies on gender and intersectionality, and their implications for programme outcomes.  

• On the anvil are investigations of the experience of climate change on women in urban India, a gender-based understanding of the drivers of antimicrobial resistance, and the intergenerational impact of rural to urban migration on women and children in migration-source locations. 

 

In our research, we are question driven, rigorous, and intentionally collaborative with the marginalised communities and government entities with whom we partner. Given that women’s health is typically equated with sexual and reproductive health alone, our work is distinctive in going beyond this focus to examine women’s health experiences across the life course.    

In our training, we have developed teaching materials that are grounded in field experiences and research on socioeconomic inequality to strengthen public health training in India. In addition, we have created knowledge products that promote active engagement with public health concerns by a wide range of stakeholders.  

In policy advocacy, we have fostered linkages between researchers, programme implementers and policymakers to support evidence-based policy development. We do this by translating participatory and community-based knowledge into action on the ground, working actively with different state governments, and engaging in a range of key national and international health policy bodies. 

As a Centre committed to addressing these challenges, we would like to drive systemic change that is inclusive, sustainable, and contributes to more efficient and high-quality healthcare alternatives that benefit all populations, but most especially vulnerable groups. Through our research, capacity building and advocacy, we are constantly striving to empower a range of stakeholders – governments, community leaders and members – to develop context-specific sustainable pathways that respond to locally relevant problems. Our commitment is to empower key stakeholders to build health systems that are just, resilient, and responsive to the needs of all. 

In doing so, we already play, and hope to expand, a vital role in creating a healthier, more equitable society where everyone has an opportunity to thrive.