Three top-notch British Asian women doctors-researchers-practitioners from University College London UCL have collaborated with Indian organisations to provide knowledge based solutions to tackle the global state of affairs on Health, Education Engineering, and Environment (HEEE).
The three musketeers Prof. Monica Lakhanpaul, Head Institute of Child Health, Dr. Priti Parikh, Faculty of Engineering, and Prof. Marie Lall of the Institute of Education are the foot soldiers for the HEEE project. They will provide a platform to link their expertise across the different UCL faculties with local Indian voices to develop solutions that will address the health problems faced by the Asian communities across the world.
Asian children are more prone to diabetes and heart diseases. HEEE, aims to address the development issues in a holistic way by co-designing solutions with local partners in Indian villages.
The British Asian professors will be aligning with the Government of India’s initiatives Clean India Mission, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
The Plan of Action
“We are trying to take some of our learnings to our working partners in India – but also we are looking at what interventions they use in India and see how we can apply them to our communities in the UK.
“For instance, the work that we are doing in the Tower Hamlets is that we are using women's groups to find out about feeding practices. This idea came from work that is already going on in India. So this kind of a bi-directional knowledge exchange is what we are looking at.
“The UK now has problem with funding for NHS and India is resource-poor as well like the UK now,” she laughs. “So how can we learn from each other.”
The professors will engage with selected villages in the Banswara region and with stakeholders across all levels of the socio-ecological framework. The partners will identify, train, and support local 'community champions' and later establish 'community education and innovation hubs' with a few chosen participating schools.
The HEEE project has been tailor-made to fit the requirements of existing government initiatives. In future, the funds will explore how the HEEE package can be scaled up to the rest of the additional India states.
The UCL team has partnered with Save the Children, The Indian Institute of Technology - New Delhi (IIT-Delhi), Symbiosis University in Pune and the Jawaharlal Nehru University - New Delhi (JNU).
The World Bank has identified under-prioritisation of nutrition and health education as a barrier to progress. The 2016-30 global strategy emphasises the need to integrate multi-sector enablers that address education, gender, sanitation, water, agriculture, and nutrition. The ground collaborations and research will go a long way to provide solutions that will stand the Asian communities globally in good stead in the years to come.
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India Facts
India faces a triple burden of childhood malnutrition * 48% (61 million) under-five's are stunted, childhood obesity is on the rise, and most have a micronutrient deficiency. * The GOI has been implementing key nutrition and behaviour change interventions through three cadres of frontline workers. * Barriers include outreach, variable levels of sanitation, social-inequity and the feasibility and effectiveness of localised integration.
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