- By JVG Krishna Murthy
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WGF receives major grant from RIST Foundation to impact 10m lives in State of Madhya Pradesh
President of WHEELS Global Foundation’s President Ratan Agarwal is pleased to announce ‘WHEELS receiving a major grant of $400,000 from RIST Foundation to address pervasive newborn malnutrition and impact 10m lives in the State of Madhya Pradesh’.
WHEELS Health Council’s Chairman Dr. Raj Shah, MD, along with the partners IIT Bombay’s Health Spoken Tutorials, CSIS, RIST Foundation and State of Madhya Pradesh’ has launched a strategic initiative to address pervasive newborn malnutrition across the entire State of Madhya Pradesh, one of the largest States in India. It is built upon the pioneering work of HST’s lead researcher Dr. Rupal Dalal and groundbreaking mass communication innovation ‘Spoken Tutorial’ by Professor Kannan Moudgalya at IIT Bombay. RIST Foundation is providing the grant to support the first phase deployment in 7 districts, which will eventually impact the entire health infrastructure of MP and >10 million babies and mothers.
What is this Grant About?
It is part of our broad strategic MOU with State of M.P. Health Department signed in June 2022 to collaborate and deploy technology-driven interventions to improve health outcomes.
We are grateful for the great partnership and support from the CSIS team to jointly drive the dialog with M.P. Health leaders (Additional Commissioner and team) and grateful to the RIST Foundation for their large grant to ensure the success of this highly strategic and high-impact initiative, which would open the doors to many other States deploying this proven solution.
Where is the intervention implemented?
Phase 1 covers seven districts of Madhya Pradesh for a duration of 12-18 months and Phase 2 will cover the remaining 46 districts and is expected to start as Phase 1 comes to a close.
Why the initiative?
After very strong results in five rural and tribal districts like Nandurbar (in Maharashtra) where malnutrition rates came down from 67% to low single-digits and weight gain went up as much as five-fold, this initiative would accelerate the intervention at State level. Grant is supporting phase-1 deployment in seven strategically chosen districts to enable capacity building for State (through Training-the-trainer model) to then scale the program to remaining 46 districts, impacting 10m babies and mothers.
The pioneering research by Dr. Rupal Dalal identified the cause of newborn malnutrition as poor breastfeeding techniques that often limit babies to getting only about 28% of the available milk supply from the mother.
This initiative validates WGF’ unique model and ability to bring strategic partners and achieve impact at scale in line with its stated mission of impacting ‘20% of Rurban population in India by 2030’.
How is the intervention planned?
It is built upon pioneering work of HST’s lead researcher Dr Rupal Dalal and groundbreaking mass communication innovation Spoken Tutorials by Professor Kannan Moudgalya at IIT Bombay. RIST Foundation is providing the grant to support the first phase of seven district deployment, which will eventually impact the entire health infrastructure of M.P. and >10 million babies and mothers.’
The initiative is leveraging an innovative training and communication platform, called Spoken Tutorials, developed at IIT Bombay, to overcome tough scaling challenges of communicating new behaviors and practices across highly distributed, remote, and under-resourced target populations with needed speed and very low cost to match the affordability in the system.
This is a great example of public-private partnership involving several mission-aligned partners, leveraging on-the-ground vast public resources (in this case thousands of PHCs and CHCs, tens of thousands of Asha and Aanganwadi workers), integrated with power of technologies (Spoken Tutorials) and original thinking and research (by Dr. Rupal Dalal) and business creativity (train-the-trainer model) to create necessary long-lasting capacity-building in the public health system to sustain the change and impact.
The teams will be using our Health Spoken Tutorials, created at IIT Bombay in the field. Sharing a short video! Health Spoken Tutorial Promo Video (youtube.com).
Notable Quotes on the Initiative
Quotes from CSIS’s Kathy, RIST’s Paul Glick, HST team (Prof Kannan, Dr. Rupal Dalal, Dr. Devaji Patil), Dr. Srinandan Kasi, Ratan Agarwal from WGF.
Notable Quotes on the Initiative:
Ratan Agarwal, President, WHEELS Global Foundation: “Complexity and magnitude of challenges in the health sector of India with its 1.4 billion population are hard to fathom. However, initiatives like this bring equal-scale optimism through the power of technology, innovation, impact ecosystem, and public-private partnerships, whereby we are able to deliver compelling and repeatable high-impact solutions at scale touching the lives of millions. This is what the society and country expect of IIT brand.”
Katherine Hadda, Visiting Fellow at CSIS US-India Policy Studies Chair: “Indian states are often a fulcrum of innovation, and Madhya Pradesh is a leader in using public-private partnerships to improve government-provided health care outcomes. We are delighted to have brought together the state’s public health officials with the dedicated team at the WHEELS Global Foundation, who will use advanced technology and hands-on training to reduce newborn malnutrition in MP, providing a template for similar work elsewhere in the state and throughout India.”
Paul Glick, Executive Director, RIST: “At Rural India Supporting Trust (RIST), we strive to support organizations and programs that are combatting critical issues and providing data-driven solutions to long-term challenges, With this grant and partnership with Wheels Global, we hope to positively impact Madhya Pradesh’s healthcare infrastructure by reducing malnutrition in newborns. It is vital to address malnutrition at an early stage as it impacts every phase of life and acts as a barrier to future growth and development for children. By recognizing the needs of underserved communities, we can collectively work towards building a just and equitable society for all.”
Prof. Kannan Moudgalya, Head of Spoken Tutorial, IIT Bombay: “Education Technology has the power to take correct information to the right audience at the right time. All of those who undergo our training will have access to over 100 tutorials on effective breastfeeding and complementary feeding. We are very grateful to WHEELS Global, the RIST Foundation and the MP government for enabling us to implement this program.”
Dr. Rupal Dalal, Pediatrician and Lead-researcher, HST: “We are looking forward to working in these challenging districts of MP, with four out of seven districts being aspirational. Empowering healthcare workers with sound knowledge through powerful technologies like Health Spoken Tutorial (HST) and Cuedwell application with the dedicated HST team at the helm and supportive partners like WGF and RIST Foundation, I am sure we will be successful in this endeavor to improve nutrition status among our babies in some of the most difficult districts of Madhya Pradesh.”
Dr. Devaji Patil, Consultant – Public Health and Nutrition: “It is rare to see the coming together of Integrity, innate drive and innovation, to reach every single mother and child in need. This intervention will change the landscape of Nutrition education in India.”
Dr. Srinandan Kasi, CEO, Cuedwell: “We are excited to partner with RIST Foundation, the WHEELS Global Foundation, and IIT Bombay Health Spoken Tutorials to deliver accelerated solutions that address the vital challenge of mother and child nutrition.”
Post for FB/LinkedIn:
Glad to share that WHEELS Global Foundation’s Health Council, along with its partners, has launched a strategic initiative to tackle newborn malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh, India. Visit RIST Foundation Grant Announcement – WHEELS Global Foundation to know more.
This initiative leverages the innovative Health Spoken Tutorials and Spoken Tutorial technologies developed by IIT Bombay and is supported by a generous grant from RIST Foundation. This is a huge step towards improving the health and well-being of millions of babies and mothers in India. @WHEELSGF, @the_ristrust, @KannanMoudgalya, #newborn #malnutrition, @CSIS.
