Social
Assessment Study for Karnataka Health Systems Development
Project
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Karnataka
has made significant progress in improving the health
status of its community with considerable improvements in
life expectancy and a decline in infant mortality, fertility,
malnutrition, illiteracy etc. Despite all these achievements,
certain groups of the population are at the risk of developing
malnutrition, disease or disability because of their different
attributes or characteristics such as geographical isolation,
socio- economic status, age group, gender and physical afflictions.
The awareness of these communities regarding their health
needs is poor, their health seeking behaviour is not appropriate
and many of them do not have access to quality health care
services. The Karnataka Health System Development Project
with the support of World Bank has decided to give special
impetus to improve the health care services for these vulnerable
communities. Accordingly, assigned the task to the Indian
Institute of Health Management Research,
Bangalore to carry out a social assessment of vulnerable
communities for assessing their health status, identifying
their health care needs, barriers in availing existing health
facilities and their perception on health related matters.
The
social assessment study was carried out among the vulnerable
communities i.e. economically weaker section, scheduled
castes, scheduled tribes, women and adolescent girls in
selected districts of Karnataka. Before developing the conceptual
framework, literature review was done and accordingly, the
study was designed. The study design was qualitative and
data collection methods included focus group discussions,
in-depth interviews and case studies and various PRA methods
to assess the perception of vulnerable communities towards
their health problems and availability and utilization of
health care services. Besides this, two workshops were conducted
with various stakeholders including district level officials
from health, women and child department, education, tribal
welfare, NGOs at Mysore and Bagalkot.
Based
on the Dr. Nanjundappa's Committee report, four regions
i.e Bangalore, Mysore, Belgaum and Gulburga were taken up
for the study. From each of these regions, one district
was selected i.e. Tumkur, Mandya, Bagalkot, Koppal. For
representation of Tribal Settlement Population, districts
Mysore and Kodagu were selected and for NGO consultation,
district Chamarajnagar was selected. From each of the selected
districts, two taluks having maximum SC and ST population
were selected. Further, from each taluka, four to five villages
were randomly selected for data collection.
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