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In her own words:
ICRW Research Helps Change Health Policy in Indian State

ICRW researcher Rohini Pande (right) describes a recent conference on adolescent health in India where our research helped to change policy.

It is rare that public policy changes before your eyes, but that is what happened when ICRW presented new research on adolescent health at a Sept. 29, 2006 conference in New Delhi. At the end of a long day, Dr. Padmanabhan, the director of public health services for Tamil Nadu (a state in southern India), and Mr. Chaitanya Prasad, from India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, hammered out details that would give women and adolescent girls in Tamil Nadu better, more cost-effective treatment for reproductive tract infections (RTIs). Here's how it happened.

ICRW, in partnership with five prominent Indian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), organized a dissemination meeting for NGOs and government officials to share the results of a 10-year research project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, on adolescent reproductive health in India. One of the studies, conducted by the Christian Medical College, Vellore, compared the effects of using a female village health aide versus a female doctor to treat RTIs. Results showed that the village health aides were as effective as the doctor in diagnosing and treating RTIs and more cost-effective and accessible than a female doctor who is able to visit a community only about once every six weeks.

Hearing the results, Dr. Padmanabhan announced to the audience that he wanted to implement a plan to use village health aides in the Tamil Nadu public health system. He faced a key obstacle, however: National law lacked provisions for health aides to dispense the medications necessary to treat most RTIs.

Mr. Prasad, as a representative of the central government, responded that if Dr. Padmanabhan included the strategy in his state's Policy Implementation Plan — a key strategy document guiding how states will implement reproductive and child health policy — then he would lobby at the central government level to allow village aides to treat RTIs. The two men and the study's principal investigator then gathered privately to discuss how to add the RTI treatment strategy to the Tamil Nadu Policy Implementation Plan, which is being submitted to the national government.

It can sometimes take years to see results transform policy. But on one September afternoon, it only took hours as the right people learned about the right evidence on how to improve RTI treatments in rural India. India is in the midst of implementing new adolescent reproductive health policies, and these results as well as other evidence from the Improving the Reproductive Health of Married and Unmarried Youth in India study shed light on new ways to strengthen and improve adolescent reproductive health services.

Click here to read the full report.

Click here to learn more about ICRW's work in India.

Cover of Improving Reproductive Health Report

Improving the Reproductive Health of Married and Unmarried Youth in India

Evidence of Effectiveness and Costs from Community-based Interventions

ICRW coordinated multi-site research and intervention studies on youth reproductive health and sexuality from 1996 to 2006. The project found that one of the best — and fastest — ways to improve adolescents' health is to involve parents, in-laws and the communities where adolescents live.

The research project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, focused on developing and evaluating reproductive health interventions tailored to the context of adolescents' lives, including their families and their communities.

ICRW partnered with the following community-based, nongovernmental organizations in India to conduct research, implement and evaluate the project: