Public Health-Module

Health is nothing but the complete physical and mental status of an individual. It is mainly affected by biological, environmental, chemical and emotional factors. In the present global context it has grabbed a major focus and concern of government, international organizations and nonprofit organizations. Because of these reasons it affects the whole living status of the society. At the same the agencies try to build a healthy social order throughout the human society.

  Public health is a system in which disease prevention and health promotion of the general population will be taken care by an established organization or by government. The core areas of public health are nutritional level, standard of living, biostatistics, MCH, RCH, environmental condition, sanitation, basic health infrastructure, etc.

  On 02 February, 2009 module on Public Health has taken by Meenakshi Agarwal. She has masters in public health and presently serving Deshpande Foundation as a Program Manager-Global Exchange. Previously she has worked for Apnalaya in Mumbai.

She mainly focused on present status of urban poor in India especially in metros like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai etc. The condition of urban poor doesn't differ from rural population. It is believed that the urban people are enjoying good health facilities. But it is not true, because many underserved and vulnerable part of the society is living in urban area i.e. slum population. Due to migration from rural areas they won’t get proper housing, access to safe drinking water, nutritious food and so on.

           From this module I learnt realities of urban slums, services available to improve their health status and our role required for the promotion of their health. I am very much attracted by ward coordination approach of Indore case study. I also come to know about proposal writing and convincing the funding organizations.

Main activities:

·         Introduction about the topic

·         Core issues of public health

·         Video presentation

·         Analysis of the video

·         Debate

·         Case study

·         Proposal writing

·         Grant making (Role Play).