Upendra Bhojani

• PhD, MPH, BDS
• Managing Director at Institute of Public Health

This dataset provides information about regimes in 10 Indian States (Karnataka, Kerala, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, West Bengal, Meghalaya, and Nagaland) for the period of 1990-2017. The dataset contains variables that are proxy of 'power' and 'stability' of state-level regimes for successive rounds of elections to legislative ass...

Background: Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control necessitates the governments to take measures to protect health policy from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry (TI). Considering the vast geographical area and diversity between states within India, it is necessary to e...

Introduction Interest in multisectoral policies has increased, particularly in the context of low-income and middle-income countries and efforts towards Sustainable Development Goals, with greater attention to understand effective strategies for implementation and governance. The study aimed to explore and map the composition and structure of a mul...

Background: There has been a growing interest around implementation and unpacking the ‘black-box’ of how things work over the last few years. Policies are complex in their design and implementation because of the number of interacting agents, the environment and forces that influence in a given system. There is a dearth of research informing policy...

Background: Tobacco use is a major public health challenge in India with over 267 million consumers. Various initiatives have been used to control and reduce tobacco usage but few of them are studied in detail. One of them is the National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) that ensures the enforcement and implementation of tobacco control laws/measur...

India faces the difficult challenge of balancing strong tobacco-control regulations to protect the public health while being home to a profitable tobacco industry. This dynamic illustrates the complexities around tobacco regulation. As the parliament keeps the government accountable, we analysed tobacco-related questions to map the varied concerns...

Background A large proportion of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are treatable within primary health care (PHC) settings in a cost-effective manner. However, the utilization of PHCs for NCD care is comparatively low in India. The Access-to-Medicines (ATM) study examined whether (and how) interventions aimed at health service optimization alone or...

Background: The development and implementation of health policy have become more overt in the era of Sustainable Development Goals, with expectations for greater inclusivity and comprehensiveness in addressing health holistically. Such challenges are more marked in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where policy contexts, actor interests an...

Introduction: The youth are a vulnerable population-group for tobacco-related harms. Schools are an excellent setting for health promotion; yet there is a dearth of school-based cessation interventions, rarely evaluated for their impact. Here, we assess the impact of the LifeFirst program: an ongoing tobacco and supari (areca nut) cessation interv...

Introduction: There are ongoing policies and programs to reduce tobacco use and minimise the associated health burden in India. However, there are several challenges in practice leading to different outcomes across Indian states. Inadequate understanding of how national tobacco control policies achieve their results under varied circumstances obstr...

Introduction India continues to enhance tobacco control regulations protecting the public health while housing a widespread tobacco industry. This implies complexities in regulating tobacco. As part of a broader inquiry on the political economy of tobacco, we aimed to understand the concerns of Indian parliamentarians around tobacco. Methods We so...

Poster presented at the Sixth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR2020) based on our ongoing DBT/ Wellcome Trust India Alliance early career fellowship project awarded to Dr. Pragati Hebbar

Background A large proportion of non-communicable diseases (NCD) are treatable within primary health care (PHC) settings in a cost-effective manner; however, dependence on PHCs for NCD care is comparatively low in India. The Access to Medicines (ATM) study examined the effect of a community-level and health service level package of interventions on...

Social inequalities are intensifying globally and widening divisions are linked to civil unrest. Disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups experience poor access to, representation in and outcomes from public services such as healthcare and education. As mechanisms for social participation and citizenship, public services are key to inclusive and s...

Social inequalities are intensifying globally and widening divisions are linked to civil unrest. Disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups experience poor access to, representation in and outcomes from public services such as healthcare and education. As mechanisms for social participation and citizenship, public services are key to inclusive and s...

Abstract Social inequalities are intensifying globally and widening divisions are linked to civil unrest. Disadvantaged ethnic and religious groups experience poor access to, representation in and outcomes from public services such as healthcare and education. As mechanisms for social participation and citizenship, public services are key to inclus...

The National Health Policy in India mentions equity as a key policy principle and emphasises the role of affirmative action in achieving health equity for a range of excluded groups. We conducted a scoping review of literature and three multi-stakeholder workshops to better understand the available evidence on the impact of affirmative action polic...

Introduction Combined efforts to encompass different aspects of tobacco control have been in place for some time. Despite the recognition of the need to offer support to tobacco users to quit tobacco use, such support remains highly inadequate in India. However, little is known about the practice of oral health professionals (OHP) and the experienc...

Five-year research in a poor urban neighborhood in South India reveals a high burden of chronic conditions where the majority rely on private health facilities for care. Poverty hinders people from accessing health services and those who seek care get further impoverished. Socially defined roles and positions limit women and elderly in managing car...

Background: Chronic conditions are on rise globally and in India. Prevailing intra-urban inequities in access to healthcare services compounds the problems faced by urban poor. This paper reports the trends in self-reported prevalence of chronic conditions and health-seeking pattern among residents of a poor urban neighborhood in south India. Met...

Introduction: The government of India introduced a tobacco control legislation in 2003 and is a party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. However, anecdotal evidence points to the government's conflicting interests in tobacco control and trade. This research seeks to scope instances of conflicts of interests within the government a...

Many efficacious health service interventions to improve diabetes care are known. However, there is little evidence on whether such interventions are effective while delivered in real-world resourceconstrained settings. Objective: To evaluate an intervention aimed at improving diabetes care using the RE-AIM (reach, efficacy/effectiveness, adoption,...

Background: Many efficacious health service interventions to improve diabetes care are known. However, there is little evidence on whether such interventions are effective while delivered in real-world resource constrained settings. Objective: To evaluate an intervention aimed at improving diabetes care using the RE-AIM (reach, efficacy/ effectiven...

Weak health systems in low-and middle-income countries are recognized as the major constraint in responding to the rising burden of chronic conditions. Despite recognition by global actors for the need for research on health systems, little attention has been given to the role played by local health systems. We aim to analyze a mixed local health s...

http://www.hhrjournal.org/2014/07/15/litigation-for-claiming-health-rights-insights-from-tobacco-control/

Background: Four out of five adults with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). India has the second highest number of diabetes patients in the world. Despite a huge burden, diabetes care remains suboptimal. While patients (and families) play an important role in managing chronic conditions, there is a dearth of studies in LMIC...

The burden of chronic conditions is high in low- and middle-income countries and poses a significant challenge to already weak healthcare delivery systems in these countries. Studies investigating chronic conditions among the urban poor remain few and focused on specific chronic conditions rather than providing overall profile of chronic conditions...

Background: Globally, tobacco use is a major public health concern given its huge morbidity and mortality burden that is inequitably high in low- and middle-income countries. The World Health Organization has suggested banning the advertisement, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco. However, governments in some countries, including India, are eith...

This monograph is based on a large-scale study among youth in Bangalore, the met- ropolitan capital of Karnataka. It elaborates various aspects related to tobacco use among youth: consumption of tobacco; perceptions of tobacco use and tobacco users; individual, social and environmental correlates of tobacco use; and status of prevailing tobacco c...

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Background: The burden of chronic conditions is on the rise in India, necessitating long-term support from healthcare services. Healthcare, in India, is primarily financed through out-of-pocket payments by households. Considering scarce evidence available from India, our study investigates whether and how out-of-pocket payments for outpatient care...

Source of finances for households to cope with OOP payments. Provides a table presenting the data on source of financing used by households to cope with the out-of-pocket payments for outpatient care for chronic conditions. It provides this information for households in different income quintiles, households that fell above or below the poverty lin...

Correlates of financial catastrophe among households. Provides a table providing monthly OOP payments per chronic condition according to type and level of healthcare services.

Concentration curves and indices. Depicts the concentration curves for catastrophic healthcare expenditure at various catastrophic thresholds. It also provides values for concentration index for various catastrophic thresholds. Both, the concentration curve being above the line of equality, as well as the negative values for concentration index, su...

Methods The paper draws on fieldwork conducted in KG Halli, a poor urban slum neighbourhood in Bangalore. The fieldwork is part of a larger urban health action research project (UHARP), carried out in this area since 2009. The project aims at enhancing quality of health care of residents in this area. This paper is based on data collected over a pe...

Frameworks can clarify concepts and improve understanding of underlying mechanisms in the domain of health systems research and strengthening. Many existing frameworks have a limited capacity to analyze interactions and equilibriums within a health system overlooking values as an underlying steering mechanism. This paper introduces the health sys...

Poster presented at the 15th World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH).

Prevalence of tobacco use among adolescents in India is very high. Despite many epidemiological studies exploring tobacco use among youth, there is no published data on adolescents' perceptions about smokers in Indian society and its implications on tobacco control. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a stratified random sampling with proba...

Questionnaire. Detailed questionnaire (English language) used in the study.

India has played a key role in drawing up the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that was initiated by the World Health Organisation and the country has ratified it. Ironically, the government’s Indian Tobacco Board is expected to promote Indian varieties of tobacco and the development of the tobacco industry. A draft code of conduct...

The newly created Department of Health Research of the central health ministry has formulated the draft National Health Research Policy 2011, improving upon the 2010 version. A critical examination of the contents from a health researcher-practitioner's perspective shows a number of shortcomings: a lack of clarity in the terminology, a simplistic i...

Tobacco use imposes a huge burden of disease in India. Most studies on the use of tobacco among students in India have focused on secondary school students with a few studies investigating younger children and university students. We aimed to ascertain tobacco use among pre-university college students in Bangalore. A cross-sectional study was condu...

The World Trade Organization's agreement on Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures offers member countries the right to set their own standards for safeguarding health and plant life. But it also restricts member countries’ right to use precautionary principals. Using this alley in SPS agreement, the United States exerted a heav...