India

Working with our measurement, learning and evaluation partners and using multidisciplinary research methods, our findings on what works, why and how aims to close the gap in implementation research on how to get life-saving interventions to families at scale.

In India, our research focusses on:

Tracking progress

Together with the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, IDEAS produces a biannual maternal and newborn health dashboard. This dashboard will highlight progress against targets for coverage of a core set of 15 evidence-based interventions along the continuum of care by 2020 in the Indian States of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Supporting local decision-making

In the state of West Bengal, India, IDEAS will build upon the experiences and lessons of the prototype phase of the Data-Informed Platform for Health (DIPH). The DIPH aims to strengthen health systems by supporting the use of local data for decision-making, priority-setting and planning at the district health administration level. The DIPH brings together key district-level data on inputs and processes and so facilitates the appraisal of maternal and newborn health services and programmes.

This prototype phase was implemented in two districts of the state – North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas – but now it will be adapted for implementation across the entire state of West Bengal with a population of over 90 million people. Through to 2020, we plan capacity-building workshops at six-monthly intervals at the division level for DIPH district implementers and stakeholders. Guidance and technical support will also be provided by IDEAS upon request to DIPH district implementers.

Fostering innovation sustainability

IDEAS carries out qualitative studies to assess what happens in the long term to donor-funded maternal and newborn health innovations that are scaled-up – and how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other donors can take steps to foster sustainability.

This work will generate important new knowledge on sustaining health programmes in low-income settings, building on previous IDEAS studies of scale-up and the work of other academics supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It responds to the foundation’s commitment to seeing health investments scaled-up in terms of both geography and longer-term legacies.