| Public Health Foundation of India | |
|---|---|
Public Health Foundation of India |
|
| Motto | Knowledge to Action |
| Established | Mar 28, 2006 |
| Type | Autonomous Public- Private Partnership |
| President | Professor K. Srinath Reddy |
| Admin. staff | around 150 (full-time equivalent) |
| Location | New Delhi, India |
| Website | http://www.phfi.org/ |
The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), is an autonomous foundation located in New Delhi, India. The foundation was created as a public-private initiative and launched by the Prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh in 2006 with the aim of enhancing the capacity of public health professionals in the country over five to seven years. The PHFI initiative was collaboratively developed over two years under the leadership of Rajat Gupta (Former Sr. Partner Worldwide, McKinsey & Company), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Prof. K. Srinath Reddy (President, PHFI and former Head of the Department of Cardiology, AIIMS)[1][2][3].
Contents |
India faces a severe shortfall of public health professionals, and capacity building efforts are urgently required to address its emerging public health challenges.
Public health has evolved as a multi-disciplinary science which deals with the determinants and defence of health at the population level so as to impact upon and improve the health of individuals in that population. It aims to focus on and influence the multiple determinants of health (economic, social, behavioural and biological) and to undertake and evaluate multi-sectoral interventions to positively influence those determinants. It also involves the study of health systems, their structure and management practices as channels for delivery of health services for all sections of the population.
As India experiences a rapid health transition, it is confronted both by an unfinished agenda of eliminating infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies, unsafe pregnancies and the challenge of escalating epidemics of non-communicable diseases. This composite threat to the nation’s health and development needs a concerted public health response that can ensure delivery of cost-effective interventions for health promotion, disease prevention and affordable diagnostic and the therapeutic health care.
This broad ambit makes it essential that education and training in public health is multi-disciplinary in content and that the pathways of public health action are multi-sectoral. Public health education must include subject areas like epidemiology, biostatistics, behavioural sciences, health economics, health services management, environmental health, health inequities and human rights, gender and health, health promotion and communication, ethics of health care and research. These diverse disciplines need to establish synergistic links in designing and delivering health care in prioritized sectors. It is also essential to advance a trans-disciplinary research agenda which informs policy and empowers programs. There is a constant need for surveillance, monitoring and evaluation. The interventions proposed need to be evidence based, context specific and resource sensitive. Thus public health should emphasize health promotion, disease prevention and cost effective as well as equitable health care through collective actions at various levels (viz. macro, public and private) to address the underlying causes of diseases, and foster conditions in which communities or population groups may lead healthy lives.
The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) was conceptualised as a response to growing concern over the emerging public health challenges in India. It recognizes the fact that meeting the shortfall of health professionals is imperative for a sustained and holistic response to the public health concerns in the country, which in turn requires health care to be addressed not only from the scientific perspective of what works, but also from the social perspective of who needs it the most.
The PHFI concept was developed over two years under the leadership of Mr. Rajat Gupta (Former Managing Director of McKinsey & Company), the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and Prof. K. Srinath Reddy, Former Head of Department Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The concept was collaboratively evolved through consultation with multiple constituencies including Indian and international academia, State and Central Governments in India, multi & bi-lateral agencies, civil society groups in India.
The Public Health Foundation of India is an autonomously governed public private partnership launched by the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, on March 28, 2006 at New Delhi. The Foundation is managed by a fully empowered, independent, governing board that is represented by multiple constituencies.
The Board includes senior government officials, eminent Indian and International academic and scientific leaders, civil society representatives and industry leaders. The chairman of the board is N.R. Narayana Murthy.[4] Board members include: Montek Singh Ahluwalia (Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India), Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate)and others. The President of the Foundation is Prof. K. Srinath Reddy, a cardiologist and epidemiologist who brings in a broad range of public health experience at national and global levels.
The concept enjoys wide support nationally and internationally. PHFI is supported by the World Bank, World Health Organization, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and has acacemic linkages 30 international schools of Public Health from around the world.
The PHFI is working towards building public health capacity by:
The Indian Institutes of Public Health (IIPH) established by the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) would aim to make their education and research activities relevant to India in content and context, while attaining standards which are qualitatively comparable with the best in the world. Each IIPH would provide multidisciplinary education focused on the multiple determinants of health and the skill sets needed for designing and implementing a broad range of multi-sectoral actions required to advance public health.
Four IIPHs are currently running in Bhubaneswar, Delhi, Gandhinagar (temporarily located in Ahmedabad) and Hyderabad. There are many more proposed to be set up in the entire country.