A year of collecting stories and storytellers August 15, 2009

Its been a while since this blog has been updated. As of August 2009 I have joined the Centre for Public Health and Equity as a Research and Communications Assistant for one year to work primarily on the communityhealth.in project. So you can expect more energy and activity on this blog and the project website.

Over the past two weeks I have been reflecting on the nature of my work, which is primarily concerned with enabling the Health For All movement to reach out to a greater audience. The idea is to create better ways to communicate the complexity of the health system in India as well as the  political analysis and structure of the movement in a way that allows activists to advocate better for Health For All. I have recently discovered that a lot of what I plan to do in the coming year is called info-activism.

A lot of the current campaign material within the Health For All movement in India is in the form of charters, reports and pamphlets, a formidable wall of text which as a rather politically incorrect friend of mine pointed out is ‘simply not sexy enough’. Simultaneously at the grassroots level, community health organisers are master storytellers, using a rich collection of stories to animate local communities to demand their Right to Health and to take collective responsibility for their health. Stories however, dry up as one looks at communication and education initiatives aimed at students, health workers, doctors, public health professionals and other members of the politically powerful Great Indian Middle Class. Its no surprise hence that the mention of Health For All is most often met with a blank look from those who have the greatest political potential to ensure that the poor and the powerless have access to health.

I have two expectations of what my year long project will set in motion. The first is the creation of a community of researchers and writers who will use www.communityhealth.in, a wiki encyclopedia to bring together the ingredients that make up the health story in India.  The second is creating a community of storytellers who will use these ingredients to create stories and other effective tools for advocacy and change.

This blog will be the story of this year long journey and beyond. It will hopefully grow from being merely the official project blog of communityhealth.in to being the community blog for Health For All communicators.

If you read this and would like to get involved do leave a comment, mail me at lalit82[at]gmail.com or visit the Community Portal at communityhealth.in.

Ideas for new content January 14, 2009

As part of writing a Concept Note for communityhealth.in I have been indulging in a little creative thinking regarding future content on the site. Here are some of my ideas:

1. Political mapping of media events and controversies
The past few year has seen a number of events such as the arrest of Dr. Binayak Sen, the vaccine related deaths in Tamil Nadu which led to the temporary closure of government vaccine production centers and controversies regarding polio vaccination. In each case the background story is more complex than initially made out to be. communityhealth.in could act as a useful resource for activists and journalists by providing a series of interlinked articles on the key events and players within a story. It could bring to the forefront politically powerful but hidden individuals and organisations who significantly affect health in India.

2. A glossary of Health For All terms and concepts
A number of ideas and concepts that originated within the Health For All movement often are quite ambiguous to the lay reader. A series of articles on common used but often misunderstood terms would be of immense use to students and journalists amongst others.

3. An archive of documents, images and other community health media
A large number of relevant books, documents, images, posters and other media is currently deteriorating on the shelves of a number of individuals and organizations. A serious effort must be made to digitize and preserve such media as well as to make it easily accessible.

4. Low cost effective clinical medicine
All over India and elsewhere doctors and other healthcare workers have come up with number of innovations which help keep healthcare accessable to the poor. These include technologies such as the Newmon ventilator, techniques such as using mosquito net for hernia repair and strategies for better healthcare delivery such as teaching village health workers neonatal resuscitation. However as of now there is no single location where such information is accessible except old textbooks such as Maurice King’s Primary Surgery which collates low cost surgical innovations from around the world.

5. Culturally appropriate health care
Healthcare workers in India practice in a very diverse setting, seeing patients from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Current curriculums rarely reflect this reality. There is a need to collect together phrase books which allow health workers to talk to patients and take medical histories in a number of Indian languages, to document the various cultural frameworks patients use understand their bodies, illness and the healthcare system and to make widely accessible the numerous innovations and tools used to help bridge the gap of understanding between ‘English medicine’ and Indian patients.

6. Living in rural India
Efforts are being made to address the huge unmet need for healthcare in rural areas in India by inducing more healthcare professionals to work in underserved areas. However there is a paucity of information regarding the practical day to day realities of rural India. People from urban backgrounds would benefit from information ranging from how to connect to the internet from a remote area and how to preserve food without a refrigerator to the procedures for buying land and off road vehicles.