Project Empower seeks to address these barriers through a digital platform for community health workers, which provides virtual training on identifying and treating common mental health disorders. In Gujarat, Project Empower piloted a digital platform, called TeCHO, to enable front-line providers to learn brief psychological interventions.
One key to successful healthcare is competent, trained healthcare professionals – but how can this training model improve? A recent Lancet Citizens’ Commission webinar explored this issue, through keynote lectures and a panel discussion.
In this episode of the ‘India in Focus’ podcast, Bindu Ananth, Chair at Dvara Trust, speaks with Dr. Nachiket Mor, Visiting Scientist, The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health. Dr. Mor leads the financing workstream at the Lancet Citizens’ Commission, which seeks to address challenges related to the sources and utilization of health expenditures, in order to maximize financial risk protection and to ensure an effective, equitable, reliable, and responsive health system for all.
Join us on Wednesday, October 6 at 8:00am EST for “India at 75: The Global Roots of Independence,” moderated by Dinyar Patel, Mittal Institute Research Affiliate and Assistant Professor of History at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) in Mumbai. He will join a conversation on “India at 75: The Global Roots of Independence” with panelists Nico Slate, Professor and Department Head, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University and Carolien Stolte, Senior Lecturer in History at Leiden University, The Netherlands. The Mittal Institute sat down with Dinyar to discuss the event and his new paper, which he will share at the talk.
Akshay Mangla, Mittal Institute Research Associate and Associate Professor in International Business at the University of Oxford, recently authored the new publication, “Social conflict on the front lines of reform: Institutional activism and girls’ education in rural India,” in Public Administration and Development. The study analyzes how institutional activists (frontline workers) within the Indian state negotiate social conflicts as they seek to integrate disadvantaged girls into the school system by mobilizing village women’s groups and encouraging deliberation with target households. The Mittal Institute sat down with Akshay to explore his recent work, and expertise in the comparative political economy of developing countries.
In the below article, which appeared in BMJ Global Health, authors Nivedita Saksena (Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the inaugural IDHN Fellow at the Mittal Institute), Rahul Matthan (Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru, India), Anant Bhan (Centre for Ethics, Yenepoya (Deemed to be University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India), and Satchit Balsari (Department of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School / Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Mittal Institute Steering Committee member) explore India’s National Digital Health Mission’s goal of creating a system of electronic health records that capture data, with the patient’s consent.
The Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System jointly hosted a webinar with Dvara Research and HBS Health Care Initiative on the role of commercial health insurance in providing better health outcomes and improved financial protection in India. Here, our panelists explore the question of demand for insurance, the lessons for countries such as India from global experiences on commercial insurance, and how the models can be adapted to suit low-income consumers and more.
Bennett Comerford, a second year Graduate Student Associate with the Mittal Institute, is a doctoral candidate in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. His work focuses on the intersections of religion, literature, race and coloniality in nineteenth-century Bengal. He is a past recipient of language and research fellowships in Bangladesh and India. The Mittal Institute sat down to learn more about Bennett and his research.
Each year, the Mittal Institute’s Seed for Change competition encourages Harvard students to develop a vibrant ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in India and Pakistan. Grant prizes are awarded to interdisciplinary student projects that positively impact societal, economic, and environmental issues in India and Pakistan. One Winter 2020 recipient was “Sahayak,” the brainchild of Ambika Malhortra ’20, Aeshna Prasad ’21, Harvard Graduate School of Design alumnae who both earned a Master of Architecture in Urban Design.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, schools globally have wrestled with the challenges of delivering hands-on learning projects. Enter the Soft Robotic Toolkit, part of the Mittal Institute’s Multidisciplinary Approach to Innovative Social Enterprises, supported by Tata Trusts. This program, as detailed in a MI November interview, uses active, hands-on pedagogy to provide cutting edge, high-quality STEM learning. The project provides students with kits, each of which contain the parts and instructions to create a soft robot, teaching students everything from the creation of silicone materials to the assembly of pieces.