Handing over the baton: Emergence of technical assistance and policy research institutions in India

Objectives: The USAID-funded Maternal and Child Health Sustainable Technical Assistance and Research (MCH-STAR) project, which is a five-year $13.8M initiative that improves the health of women and children in India, builds the capacity of Indian research institutions (IRI) focusing on identifying innovative maternal, neonatal, child health and nutrition (MNCHN) public health approaches.  Specifically MCH-STAR, under the guidance of Emerging Markets Groups (EMG), strengthens India’s MNCHN research infrastructure by working with stakeholders in both the public and private sector in Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and at the national level within the EAG states.  This initiative is built on the visionary concept that in order to sustainably achieve the Millennium Development Goals in India it is imperative to build the capacity of IRIs by providing technical assistance (TA) that specializes in addressing the health disparity in marginalized populations.

Methodology: MCH-STAR is spearheaded by IRIs, including the Public Health Foundation of India, the Population Foundation of India, and the India Clinical Epidemiology Network. These IRIs focus their research efforts on major causes of morbidity, mortality and malnutrition among women and children.  Subsequently, these research efforts promote evidence-based programs and policies to address MNCHN needs.

Results: Within 12 months of strengthening critical research specific systems and addressing core MNCHN capacity research gaps through providing a wide range of workshops and TA MCH-STAR has led to the improved performance of these abovementioned IRIs by building management, leadership, and organizational capacity.  Furthermore, preliminary results have shown that IRIs have the potential to perform at ‘global standards’ and also conduct policy analysis and advocacy, research and evaluation, and provide sustainable technical leadership in the MNCHN research arena. 

Conclusions: Transitional capacity strengthening can transform IRIs into TA organizations of global standards in MNCHN.