Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110527

Ketan Sudhakar Chitnis, Phd Candidate¹, Raj S. Arole, MBBS, MPH², James W. Dearing, PhD³, Arvind Singhal, Phd³, Vasant Jadhav², and Yamunabai Kulkarni, VHW². (1) Telecommunications, Ohio University, 4 Monticello Dr. #203, Athens, OH 45701, 7405935025, kc146901@ohio.edu, (2) Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), PO, Jamkhed, Dist. Ahmednagar, 413 201, India, (3) School of Communication Studies, Ohio University, 204 Lasher Hall, Athens, OH 45701

Community participation in health was promoted internationally at the 1978 Declaration of Alma Ata advocating “Health for All by 2000.” Today, there are a number of successful projects grounded in community participation. Yet, few studies have documented community participation in long-running projects where iterative learning has proved integral to project redesign through stronger participation.

The Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) has affected over 250,000 children, women and men in more than 250 drought prone and poor villages within a 30-mile radius surrounding the town of Jamkhed, India, since 1970. The project's objective is to reach out to the poorest of the poor communities, equip people with basic knowledge of preventable yet fatal diseases that people can practice locally and thus be less dependent on health professionals. Trained village health workers, poor women appointed by each village, serve as the critical link between the community and CRHP's 40-bed hospital and training center in Jamkhed. While the project's success is suggested by health indicators (infant mortality has dropped from 175 to 26 per 1000 live births in 35 years), the key to this project's success lies in empowering marginalized women and men to become active community health promoters.

We analyze the process of community organizing in Jamkhed by applying communicative concepts such as what kinds of role village health workers enact as change agents, how information is generated and diffused by and among the community members, and how communication contributes to an enabling environment for organizing people to ensure on-going collective action.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Identify “how” and “why” Comprehensive Rural Health Project, Jamkhed, India uses communication for effective organizing;
• 2. Develop a list of communication strategies that can facilitate the empowerment process among very poor residents in rural communities.

Keywords: Community Participation, Communication

Related Web page: www.jamkhed.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.