Rapid Assessment of Health Programmes

Centre for Health and Social Justice has initiated a long term programme on Capacity Building in Rapid Assessment of Health Programmes (RAHP) for Civil Society Organisations. This programme is being organized in collaboration with the Population Leadership Program of the University of Washington in Seattle (USA) and UNFPA (India).

The Centre for Health and Social Justice (CHSJ) has been facilitating a process of annual feedback on the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) with special emphasis on RCH -2 components. CHSJ has also prepared two citizen’s reports on the NRHM (2006 and 2007) which have been shared at National Stakeholders Consultation. The consultation was attended by bilateral organisations, UN agencies, Civil Society Organisations from across the country as well as the Government. The citizen’s report was very well received by various stakeholders present in the consultation as they acknowledged the need for such independent feedback for understanding the process of implementation as well as mid course corrections.

This Capacity Building initiative aims to build capacities of the civil society activists to equip them with rapid assessment processes and techniques. In the first of the programme Rapid Assessment approach will be used to study the implementation of various components of NRHM and RCH2 in different parts of the country. The studies conducted through this programme will be published as an anthology and presented at a National Stakeholders Consultation on NRHM.

The Programme

12 Civil society organisations from different states in the country were selected on the basis of their past experience of working on the issues of Health and rights. We also considered the capacities, interests and ability of the organisations to undertake documentation studies based on rapid assessment techniques. A team of two researchers from each organisation were given rigorous training in evaluation methodology by faculty from the University of Washington and CHSJ in a residential training programme from 23 June to 30 June 2008. The curriculum included wide range of issues, ranging from why RAHP, to techniques of RAP, to ethics that were involved in taking up rigorous rapid assessment programmes at their organisational level.

All the participants were encouraged to design one rapid assessment project as their assignment as a follow up of the training programme. The projects planned are around issues and components of NRHM which are areas of concern at the local level. The research designs will be finalized and implemented at the local level by the participants in a period of 5 months. A short report will also be prepared on the basis of rapid assessment project taken by them. This report will form an important part of the second phase of this initiative.

The second phase of the training will be held from 11 December to 14 December 2008, wherein, participants will be given inputs on analysis and report writing skills. It is expected that each rapid assessment project will result in a narrative report and a policy brief.