Improving adolescent health services across high priority districts in 6 states of India: Learnings from an integrated reproductive maternal newborn child and adolescent health project

Autor: Rajni Wadhwa, Nidhi Chaudhary, Nitin Bisht, Anil Gupta, Narayan Behera, Anupam Kumar Verma, Mona Chopra, Manish Jain, Geeta Verma, Sachin Gupta, Gunjan Taneja, Rajeev Gera
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Indian Journal of Community Medicine, Vol 43, Iss 5, Pp 6-11 (2018)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 0970-0218
1998-3581
DOI: 10.4103/ijcm.IJCM_38_18
Popis: Background: India has been at the forefront of designing adolescent health (AH) policies. The National Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health policy (2006), the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn Child, and AH strategy (2013), and the “Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK)” (2014) have been the critical milestones in this direction. However, despite policies being available, the AH outcomes need improvement through operationalization of focused and need-based AH interventions. Objectives: The objectives of this study were to improve services for RKSK interventions across select geographies of India. Materials and Methods: USAID's VRIDDHI Project has been providing technical support at the national level and in six focus states to improve uptake of evidence-based high-impact reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and AH interventions. To improve AH services and outcomes, two approaches were implemented, namely (a) strengthen the functioning of adolescent-friendly health clinics in 95 high caseload health facilities in 26 high priority districts across six states and (b) demonstrate other operational strategies outlined in RKSK program including strengthening of district committees on AH, undertaking formative research for developing adolescent-focused communication strategy, and operationalizing weekly iron and folic acid supplementation program. Results: As a result of ongoing technical support over 2-year period (January 2016–December 2017), improvements were noted across multiple AH indicators. In addition, evidence-based learnings were also generated from the demonstration models for potential scale up to other geographies. Conclusion: The project was successful in improving AH services in the intervention facilities through an integrated approach which is replicable, sustainable, and scalable for driving the AH program in India.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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