SNEHA – A community-based health model that delivers

Public health in urban areas is one of the most persistent, yet neglected, issues facing the developing world. Cities present an especially challenging canvas given the many different factors – migration, inadequate housing, lack of infrastructure, crime, political corruption, pollution, and dysfunctional health systems – that are in play.
Over 50% of the world’s population lives in cities and this number will rise in the next few decades. Due to migration, India’s cities are growing more than three times as fast as the rural areas, and it is likely that more than half of the country’s population will live in urban areas by 2050.
The factors that affect human health are many, ranging from climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to reproductive health and rights. Meeting them is key to India’s success in achieving universal health coverage and improved national health indicators.
The National Urban Health Mission in India aims to enable rightful access to quality health care. This is by setting up an improved public health system, partnerships, and community-based mechanisms. This is to be done with the help of secondary and tertiary institutions, urban health centers, and community outreach. The positive outcomes of such a partnership in Mumbai’s urban settlements, demonstrated by SNEHA, is the subject of a paper recently published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
The interventions of the Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action, SNEHA, interventions are born out of 16 years of work with women and children in informal settlements. They range from maternal and neonatal health,
sexual and reproductive health, childhood nutrition, and prevention of violence against women and children. What makes SNEHA’s model unique and effective is that it integrates these activities, and the model can be replicated in urban settlements across India, perhaps in many developing countries as well, with some tweaks for local, and cultural specifics.
SNEHA’s adoption of an integrated approach came after a large neonatal trial conducted in Mumbai. It was felt that this would be an effective method given the multiple health issues faced by women and children, and the belief that communities would be more responsive to an intervention that had both, physical presence and service delivery.

Every SNEHA center is equipped with three full-time community organizers with backgrounds similar to the people they reach out to. They are trained to bring together the themes of reproductive, maternal, and neonatal health, child health and nutrition, and prevention of violence against women and children into community services. They are responsible for home visits, group meetings, organizing daycare for malnourished children, and community events, in close association with existing systems.
A survey was done before, and two years after SNEHA’s intervention on three main outcomes - family planning in women (15–49 years), immunization of children, and wasting among children less than five years. The survey looked at secondary outcomes as well, like violence against women or children, number of home births, and pregnancies in women younger than 20 years, to name just a few.
There were significant improvements in the met need for family planning and full immunization. Compared to the NFHS 2015-16 figures of 14% unmet need in Mumbai, the results in the areas of intervention was 22%. Again the NFHS-4 findings showed that 46% of children between 12–23 months in Mumbai were fully immunized. Contrast that with the intervention area rates of 69%. The findings were similar when it came to wasting in children, and diet among children.
There were other positive fallouts seen as well like the use of sturdier materials to build homes, the building of private toilets, and the use of safe, drinking water.
The challenges of meeting the health needs of settlements in an urban milieu are many. The shifting nature of the population and specific cultural beliefs can often slow down rates of progress. However, the overwhelmingly positive outcomes demonstrated by SNEHA’s model show a way forward for city governments across developing countries who are grappling with ways to improve health in informal settlements.

Link to The Lancet paper - http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(16)30363-1/abstract

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