35th meeting minutes – December 2016

•  Mr A R Nanda
• Mr Alok Mukhopadhyay
• Dr Abhay Shukla
• Dr Abhijit Das
• Mr Gopi Gopalakrishnan
• Dr H Sudarshan
• Ms Mirai Chatterjee
• Dr Narendra Gupta
• Dr Sharad Iyengar
• Ms Poonam Muttreja

Officials of National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) present

• Dr Satish Kumar, Senior Advisor, Public Health Planning
• Dr Manoj Kumar Singh, Consultant, Public Health Planning

AGCA Secretariat Staff

• Mr Bijit Roy
• Mr Daman Ahuja
• Mr Smarajit Chakraborty
• Ms Seema Upadhyay

AGCA members who could not attend the meeting and were given leave of absence

• Dr Vijay Aruldas
• Ms Indu Capoor
• Dr M Prakasamma
• Dr Saraswati Swain
• Dr Thelma Narayan

Permanent invitees who could not attend the meeting and were given leave of absence

• Dr Sanjiv Kumar, Executive Director, NHSRC
• Dr Rajani Ved, Advisor, Community Processes, NHSRC

• Share updates on the ‘Strengthening Community Action for Health (CAH) under the National Health Mission’ grant for the period September-December, 2016 and identify priorities till March 2017.
• Deliberate on the regional consultations planned to be organised in January 2017.
• Seek inputs from the AGCA members on the priority areas for CAH for FY 2016-17.
• Share an update on operationalising the Decentralised Participatory Health Planning (DPHP) initiative.

AGCA members confirmed the minutes of the 34th AGCA meeting organised on September 20, 2016.

At the outset, Ms. Poonam Muttreja informed that the AGCA Secretariat had a meeting with Mr. Manoj Jhalani, Joint Secretary, Policy, MoHFW on December 8, 2016, wherein the following points were discussed:

• Feedback from the AGCA members on continuation of the Secretariat within a civil society organisation was shared with Mr Jhalani. All the AGCA members endorsed the continuation of the Secretariat at PFI.
• Mr Jhalani said that PFI will continue to host the Secretariat for the AGCA at this point. He suggested that the AGCA explore possibilities of raising resources from national funding sources to compliment the funding received from the MoHFW.
• Ms Muttreja mentioned that she will seek approval from the PFI governing board to support a proportion of costs for the AGCA Secretariat.
• The TV and radio spots made by the Secretariat were shown to Mr Jhalani. He said that these will be shared with Ms Vandana Gurnani, Joint Secretary, RCH, MoHFW, who holds charge of the Information Education and Communication (IEC) division.

Subsequently, the AGCA Secretariat had a meeting with Ms Vandana Gurnani and Ms Manisha Verma, Director, IEC, MoHFW on December 15, 2016, where they were showed the TV and radio spots.

The following points were made by the members:

• PFIs contribution to the AGCA Secretariat costs should be included as an organisational contribution and mentioned as such in the budget being submitted to the MoHFW for review and approval for the FY 2017-18.
• The time and expertise provided by the AGCA members to guide the implementation of CAH activities at the national and state levels, should also be factored in as a contribution.

Update on the Progress of AGCA Activities

Bijit Roy on behalf of the AGCA Secretariat presented an update on ‘Strengthening Community Action for Health under the National Health Mission’ grant for the period  September-December, 2016. The presentation included a briefing on the activities undertaken at the national and state levels as well as the work priorities for the next quarter January-March, 2017. Seema Upadhyay, Smarajit Chakraborty and Daman Ahuja, shared their observations on components pertaining to community processes in the 10^th Common Review Mission for Delhi, Jharkhand and Gujarat, respectively. A copy of the presentation is enclosed as Annexure A.

The following points were made by the AGCA members:

• The Secretariat should send a letter to the Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh, requesting for a meeting to discuss and seek guidance on initiating the CAH processes in the state.
• The National Health System Resource Centre (NHSRC) and AGCA need to work more closely with the State Health System Resource Centres (SHSRC) for implementation of the decentralised participatory health planning initiative.
• AGCA can explore avenues/opportunities of working with the Ministry of North-Eastern States on community based health interventions.
• The Common Review Mission (CRM) team members should be provided a more detailed orientation on communitisation processes under the NHM.
• The Secretariat should write to the Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare), Government of Rajasthan requesting for a meeting to discuss the re-initiation of the CAH process in the state.
• There is a need to work with NHSRC on capacity building and strengthening of the Rogi Kalyan Samitis.
• Dr Abhay Shukla shared that in Maharashtra, the state government is yet to sign an memorandum of understanding (MoU) with SATHI. In addition, no funds have been released for implementation of the CBMP activities. He requested the Secretariat to write to the Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) to expedite the signing of the MoU and release of funds for the current financial year.

• A common template for the progress update presentation should be developed and shared with the states to follow.
• The focus of the consultations should be to review the progress of the programme and also prepare plans for the next financial year.
• The session on photo documentation could be removed from the regional consultation agenda.

4. Priorities for the FY 2017-18

AGCA members made the following points:

• The AGCA Secretariat should identify, document and disseminate good practices in the states at the national level for adoption and funding support for scaling up.
• A national level review and planning meeting with the state nodal officers for CAH should be organised on an annual basis.
• The scope of community action should be broadened to include monitoring and planning indicators on non-communicable diseases, water, sanitation and waste disposal.
• The AGCA needs to explore opportunities for building capacities and working with the Self Help Group (SHG) federations and the Shakti Kendras. These are resource centres established by Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), which disseminate information and support access to various government schemes and entitlements.

• The role of the State Health System Resource Centre (SHSRC) will be important in anchoring the DPHP process in the states. The state SHSRC in Karnataka has already shown interest in taking a lead.
• The state AGCA and SHSRC should jointly plan and implement the DPHP processes in the states where the SHSRCs are active.
• Under the 14th Finance Commission, there has been a substantial increase of budgets to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) for enabling local planning. Therefore, there is a need to work closely with the Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj at the state levels to leverage funds for community based proposals on health.
• Building the capability of nodal officers in prioritising the community needs and converting these into doable proposals, getting these approved and funded is the key to the success of the DPHP process.
• Efforts need to be focussed on building capacities of the State Programme Management Units (SPMUs) and District Programme Management Units (DPMUs) to facilitate the DPHP processes and facilitate its inclusion in the District and State PIPs.