An annual retreat for IPSI project was held on January 10 and 11, 2025 at Chilika Lake, Odisha. The main objective of this two days event was to take stock of the project journey so far and more importantly to plan the strategies needed to be adopted for the next year.
Representatives from all IPSI partners, including the faculty as well as the project coordinators attended this meeting. This included- Johns Hopkins University, and AIIMS-New Delhi, IIPH-Gandhinagar, AIIMS-Bhubaneshwar, IIPH-Shillong, and Jhpiego India. Dr. Pavitra Mohan (Primary Health Care expert), and Dr. Nimisha Goel (Senior Program Officer, Primary Health Care, Gates Foundation, India) also participated and provided their valuable feedback.
The two-day retreat comprised of various activities such as brainstorming to ideate the strategy for improving the Sathi pilot performance, and for evaluating this pilot at the Bhavnagar district, presentation on proposed strategies at the Fatehpur (Uttar Pradesh), and Muzaffarpur (Bihar) districts, presentation of findings from formative studies undertaken in the previous year, and discussion on IPSI research agenda. Dr. Pavitra Mohan gave a keynote address and provided insights from one decade of Basic Healthcare Service’s (BHS) work in south Rajasthan. Each of the partner teams presented their work plans and received constructive feedback from colleagues and experts in the audience.
The meeting concluded with defining the scope of work for new year, which would include key demonstration activities on engaging with village health councils in West Garo Hills, capacity building initiatives for district program managers, and quality improvement initiative at Kalahandi, and continuing the Sathi pilot at Bhavnagar.
