2014 events

AROGYAM Conference: ‘Globalizing Mental Health’

The Internationales Wissehschafts Forum, Heidelberg: 11-14 June, 2014.

Organiser: Professor William Sax

The conference was organized under the auspices of AROGYAM (Advances in Research on Globally Accessible Medicine) an academic network linking researchers from Heidelberg, Edinburgh University, Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi) and the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies in Trivandrum, Kerala (South India).The network is funded for three years by the DFG, ANR (France), ESRC (U.K.), ICSSR (India) and NW (Netherlands). Global Mental Health is of particular interest at present, because awareness in India of mental health issues has dramatically increased in recent years, and ambitious plans are afoot to build capacity in this area.  Controversies are raging over the type and quantity of services that should be offered, and due to its interdisciplinary and international makeup, AROGYAM is especially well placed to discuss and comment on these issues.

There were a total of 20 participants from Edinburgh, Heidelberg, Delhi, Trivandrum, Munich and Potsdam.

AROGYAM International Symposium on Global Governance

The Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi: 7-9 September, 2014.

Organisers: Professor Rama Baru & Dr Anuj Kapilashrami

AROGYAM Consultation: ‘Conceptual and Methodological Challenges in Studying the Intersections of Gender with Other Social Inequalities’

Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram: 11-12 September, 2014.

Organisers: Professor Ravindran, Professor Rama Baru and Dr Anuj Kapilashrami

The Gender sub-theme group of AROGYAM brought together researchers from the collaborating institutions interested in:

• raising the visibility of gender issues within mainstream public health spaces;
• studying gender within a social justice framework, and
• examining the intersections of gender with other axes of vulnerability and other systems of oppression such as casteism, racism, classism and heteronormativity.

The consultation mapped and explored current understandings on intersections of gender with other social inequalities, and implications for health equity research, and gained deeper insights into, among others, the following questions:

• To what extent have studies examining gender as a social determinant of health factored in the interaction of gender with other variables? Which are the variables of intersection that have been studied? What have been their findings?
• What have been definitions and concepts used and the methodological approaches adopted (quantitative as well as qualitative) for studying the influence on health of gender in combination with other variables? What are the strengths and limitations of these? What modifications would make these more robust?

There were 25 invited participants; 15 MPH students attended as observers.

AROGYAM Workshop: ‘Develop Curricula to Strengthen Quality Management (QM) Mechanisms in The Indian Health System’

Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Thiruvananthapuram: 4–7 November, 2014.

The main purpose of this workshop was to bring together key actors to understand needs and to a develop quality management course curricula in the local context. The aim was to develop courses catered to the Indian context on quality management. Two curricula with for select target groups were developed.