Our Work in India
The Abt Associates-led PSP-One project has been an active and innovative implementer of family planning/reproductive health, child health, and HIV/AIDS activities in India for the past four years. The project has led the way in developing private and commercial partnerships to improve health outcomes in these areas and make a lasting impact on the health of rural and urban populations of the least developed states of Northern India.
India’s population currently stands at 1.1 billion. Lack of access to reproductive health services as well as poor knowledge levels and attitudinal barriers translate into continued rapid population growth, which remains at 1.9 percent a year.
As is the case in most developing countries, India shows significant gaps in health indicators between urban and rural areas. For example, the contraceptive prevalence rate in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is 56% in urban areas and 40% in rural areas. At the same time, the rural Indian population represents a huge untapped market of over 750 million people.
While India’s HIV prevalence is relatively low at 0.7 percent, the nation’s size places India only second to South Africa in number of AIDS cases, now at 5.1 million infected people. To date, the epidemic has been restricted to high-risk groups, but there is increasing concern that it is spreading to the general population.
Dehydration due to diarrhea kills almost 600,000 children under age five in India every year; most of those deaths could be prevented with the correct use of oral rehydration salts (ORS).
Preventive measures such as exclusive breast feeding or hand washing, in many cases, could have averted the illness in the first place, yet the public sector has neither the capacity nor funding to meet all these needs.
More details on each activity can be found by clicking on the links below.
Saathiya
The PSP-One project has designed and implemented an innovative, research-driven public-private partnership to meet the reproductive health needs of young couples in urban India. Saathiya, or 'trusted partner' in Hindi, is an apt name for this new campaign that helps young married couples in Lucknow, UP make informed choices about when to start childbearing and how many children to have. Research worldwide confirms that young people prefer to obtain family planning information and products from the private sector with short-acting methods being the most frequently sought.
"Saathiya" has established partnerships with a variety of contraceptive manufacturers to offer a “basket” of products geared towards youth, including condoms, emergency contraception, low dose oral contraceptives and Standard Days Method ‘CycleBeads’. Approximately 300 chemists and ‘ISMP’ (traditional) medical doctors completed a training program on adolescent reproductive health and counseling skills. These “supply side” components are complemented by a "Saathiya" promotional campaign that utilizes: radio advertising, print materials, billboards, cinema slides and community theater, along with provider signage and in-store/in-clinic materials, to create awareness of the program. A particularly innovative and effective part of the communication strategy is the “Saathiya” helpline, which received almost 12,000 calls in the first 6 months of operation.
Click here to read more about Saathiya
Click here to download the "Saathiya" Country Research Brief: Evaluating Demand-Side Impacts of a Youth-Friendly Initiative (YFI) in India: Baseline Findings
Click here to read the "Saathiya" article featured in Social Marketing Quarterly
Health at the Base of the Pyramid – h@bop
Appreciating the potential of this large-scale, fully sustainable rural distribution system, PSP-One proposed to Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (HUL) the idea of adding health products to the Shakti network to further improve health outcomes in rural India. PSP-One and HUL are now collaborating on this Health at the Base of the Pyramid effort, or h@bop. As part of this collaboration, PSP-One has assisted HUL in the development pilot interventions to be implemented in three districts Uttar Pradesh. PSP-One’s main role in this collaboration has been to broker partnerships with the manufacturers, provide technical assistance in the pilot design, training of Shakti Entrepreneurs (SEs) and market-building activities, and monitor and evaluate the pilots.
The pilot program was initiated with the introduction of ORS into SE's basket in May 2008. Already, the SE's have been successful in selling the product and therefore, in increasing their income.
Click here to read more about Health at the Base of the Pyramid-h@bop
Click here to visit our Commercial Alliances pageDiMPA Network
PSP-One is currently operating a private provider network of over 1,000 providers in northern India to increase use of injectable contraceptives. The network consists of OB/GYNs and general practitioners trained to provide quality family planning services with a focus on the depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) 3-month injectable.
Despite the challenges the DiMPA Network has faced over the years, it has thrived. When the pilot began the network consisted of only 105 providers in 3 towns and today it covers 45 towns with 1,150 providers. Additionally, attitudes towards injectables have improved dramatically, which represents a major step forward in efforts to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate. Finally, PSP-One’s experience in managing the network and implementing a wide array of interventions has greatly contributed to the body of knowledge about the use of Networks for family planning and reproductive health.
Click here to read more about the DiMPA Network
PACT-CRH
Under the Program for Advancement of Commercial Technology – Child and Reproductive Health (PACT-CRH), PSP-One has made important contributions in the areas of demand creation, behavior change, and introducing and commercializing new RCH products. PACT-CRH was a bilateral project between the Government of India (GOI) and USAID whose implementing partners included ICICI Bank with technical assistance provided by HealthTech, SOMARC, CMS, and subsequently, PSP-One. Over the past 12 years, the program helped evolve some of the most significant and innovative private sector partnerships in public health in the areas of technology development and introduction as well as market growth and promotion for reproductive health, maternal and child health, and HIV/AIDS initiatives. Under the PACT-CRH project, PSP-One successfully developed and implemented 2 behavior change communication campaigns (Yahi Hai Sahi and Condom, Bindaas Bol) and the Complete Home Diarrhea Management program and aided in launching Zinc onto the India market as part of diarrhea management for children under five.
Operation Lighthouse
Operation Lighthouse, the follow-on project to the AIDSMark Project, specifically targets core at-risk groups, including sex workers and their clients in and around major ports. This also includes truck drivers through 4 mobile and 9 stationary VCT centers.HIV prevalence is largely concentrated among most at risk populations in India. Given this situation, Operation Lighthouse, the follow-on project to AIDSMark, focused on reaching high-risk adult males (truck drivers and sex workers and their clients) with behavior change communications and information about the importance of being tested for HIV. Targeting this population through these activities was vital to the containment of HIV because of their potential to infect their wives and girlfriends in the general population.
Click here to read more about Operation Lighthouse
