Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement (GRAAM) and MANIPAL ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION (a deemed to be university) Prasanna School of Public Health (PSPH) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on public health programs in India. The main focus of the MoU is collaboration in research, policy engagement and knowledge building programmes. In addition to these programmes, The MoU also includes exchange of faculty and experts, thereby providing an interface between academia and implementation of public health policies at the grassroots level.
The MoU was signed and exchanged between Dr Basavaraju R Shrestha, Executive Director of GRAAM and Dr Helmut Brand, Founding Director of PSPH at the G20’s ‘Delivering Democracy – Retrospect and Prospect’ conference, held at Bengaluru on 12th April 2023.
The MoU will benefit PSPH in providing practical hands-on training to the students who are enrolling to the institution’s programmes in Public Health space. PSPH will thereby provide a stage for the students to interact with the communities at the grassroots level, include their voices in the process of development in public health space, and translate evidence into policy decisions. It also strengthens GRAAM’s outreach to the communities at the grassroots, and extends the impact by enabling pragmatic research and policy-making. The faculty-exchange programme in MoU provides a forum for mutual exchange of knowledge & experiences in public health space.
The following distinguished members were present at the MoU signing and exchange event.
· Smt Ritu Khanduri, Speaker, Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly
· Dr R Balasubramaniam, Member, Capacity Building Commission, GoI and Founder, GRAAM
· Mr Kiran DM, Sous Sherpa, Civil 20
· Dr Sanjay Pattanshetty, Head of Department of Global Health Governance, PSPH
· Dr Ananya Samajdar, Deputy Director Research, GRAAM
About GRAAM
GRAAM is a development research and policy engagement initiative in Mysuru, India. The organization has done several public health studies and projects for many reputed partners like World Health Organization (WHO), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Karnataka Evaluation authority, Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynaecology and Obstetrics (JHPIEGO), and Piramal Swasthya Management and Research Institute (PSMRI). One of the main projects done by GRAAM is multi-state study with implications on National Health Policy, such as the assessment of Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres. This project was done for MoHFW.
GRAAM’s extensive expertise spans over policy research, Impact Assessment and Evaluation, Community Consultation, Policy Engagement, Strategic Consultation and Academic Programs. The main objective is to ensure that the ‘voices’ of the communities at the grassroots are significantly accounted for, in the process of development. The focus is to provide evidence-based and actionable policy/program inputs incorporating grassroots perspectives, aiming towards a citizen-centric public policy.
About Prasanna School of Public Health, MAHE
Manipal Academy of Higher Education, is a deemed to be university under Section 3 of the UGC Act 1956. Prasanna School of Public Health (PSPH) emerged as a constituent unit of MAHE in 2017 encompassing the Departments of Data Science, Health Information, Health Innovation, Health Policy and Global Health.
The institution aspires to become a focal point of multi-disciplinary research and education on public health. PSPH offers post-graduate programmes in Biostatistics, Data Science, Hospital Administration, Public Health and Social Work. It aims to be a” game-changer” in academia and research, translating evidence into policy decisions to attain excellence and sustainability in public health by training the next generation of public health leaders.