J. P. Shivdasani’s scientific contributions

The significant achievement within public health in India during the past few decades is visualized by a decrease in demographic indicators for health like IMR, MMR, TFR and doubling of life expectancy health care system across the states visages a kind of disagreement of an emerging disconnect between the complexity and iniquitous nature of problems as well as the competence to address it meaningfully. The health outcomes still remain depleted when the country is compared with others with similar economic stage of development. Our past efforts to improve the health status showed that optimum health cannot be achieved without the development of other sectors like economy, education and information, social and environment. Hence, there should be an intense collaboration with other departments for achieving the quality of life; and it is desirable that each sector should consider health dimension in their public policy and programme strategies with utmost priority of is paper is to explore the level of interministerial contribution and collaboration within and between for health; based on the content analysis of various recent annual reports and publications of each ministry. The intent is for a deeper understanding of inter-sectoral and multi-sectoral collaboration and contribution at all stages for health; identifying the strength, weakness and disparity which need to be tackled for improving and suggesting strategies for the sustainable development of health in India. The study found that majority of the ministries has incorporated health dimension in their policy and programme. But for the country to attain sustainable development for health, requires strong actions with well-defined strategies for mutual cooperation and collaboration between all the ministries and departments at all stages from resources allocation to programme implementation for the desired outcome with the set time period.

Background: As the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, various steps were taken to curb its spread. Government of India introduced contact tracing “Aarogya Setu” app. In this study we assessed the awareness and utility of the app among the residents of India which in turn affects its usage.Methods: This was a community based online cross-section survey. The snowball sampling technique was used for data collection. The questionnaire was developed to understand the knowledge and practices pertaining to COVID-19 but for publication purpose, items related to Aarogya Setu application have been analysed. The data was collected in the 1st week of July 2020. Frequency tables for various socio-demographic details of the participants were formed. Chi Square test of significance was used to analyse the awareness and utility of the app against sociodemographic characteristics.Results: Majority of the participants were aware about the app, using it and found it useful. The awareness and use of the app was found to be significantly associated with gender, age, education and occupation and the usefulness was found to be significantly associated with gender and occupation. Awareness was found to be higher among males, age group 45-59 years, with professional degree and government employees.Conclusions: These findings can be taken by policy makers while considering promotion of the application. Future steps should involve developing relevant training and communication material to enhance the use of the application

The significant achievement in public health in India during the past few decades is visualized by a decrease in demographic indicators for health like IMR, MMR, TFR and doubling of life expectancy. But grading people’s health and the health care system across the states visage a kind of disagreement of an emerging disconnect between the complexity and iniquitous nature of problems as well as the competence to address it meaningfully. The health outcomes still remain depleted when the country is compared with other countries with similar economic stages of development. Health policies and programmes highlight the need of governance in health for distribution of responsibilities and resources, maintaining accountability between centre and state, strengthening institutional mechanism for consultative decision-making and coordinated implementation to achieve it. Thus, the objective of this paper is to explore the level of collaboration within and between various players for health based on the survey of literature of the last one decade. Content analysis of various literatures available in the areas was done for deeper understanding of multi-sectoral collaboration at all stages for health emphasizing the local governance. Identify the strength, weakness and disparity which need to be addressed for improving and suggest evidence-based strategies for the sustainable development of health in India. There has been a general improvement in the provision of health care infrastructure, human resource development but more pro-action was needed considering the country’s failure to achieve many of the targets, and the status of health of the people still stays way below the world average. This raises questions about the strategic implementation mechanism at different stages of the programmes focusing on removing the regional and gender disparities. Studies have shown that various socioeconomic factors influence people in reaching out to health care facilities in the rural areas particularly by the most vulnerable sections of the population; and it needs to be addressed specifically. Considering the diversifying nature of the problem, its quantum and differential stage of development between regions; calls for local-specific strategies and programmes with very pro-active community participation. Without active involvement of the communities, achievement of primary health target is going to be very difficult. Therefore, it visualizes the strengthening of local collaborative governance for strengthening the health system by capacity building of the local self-governance. This, in turn, will enhance their role at different levels of health governance, in addressing the social determinants of health, making community-based planning and mandatory monitoring in order to place people at the centre of the health system and development process for effective monitoring of services and accountability in the management and delivery of healthcare services.