District health management
A study conducted by IPH in 2007 revealed that an important reason for poor health outcomes in India was the lack of management skills at the district level. Based on this study, IPH decided to train district level officers on public health management. To strengthen the technical inputs, IPH formed a consortium of five organisations, called Swasthya Karnataka (SK).
SK partnered with the Karnataka Health Systems Development and Reforms Project (KHSDRP) to build the capacity of the Tumkur District Health Officers.
<strong>SK project partners</strong>
- Institute of Public Health,Bangalore
- Centre for Global Health Research, Bangalore
- Centre for Leadership and Management in Public Services (C-LAMPS)
- Institute of Health Management and Research (IHMR), Bangalore
- Karuna Trust
- Karnataka Health Promotion trust
<strong>Profile of the participants</strong>
- District Health Officer
- District Programme officers
- Taluk Health Officers
- Specialists from district and taluk hospitals
- Nursing officers
- Administrative officers
- BPMs and DPMs
Design of the training programme
Curriculum was developed keeping adult learning principles in mind using experiential learning techniques. Content focused on building knowledge and skills through practical application of the content to issues in the participant’s daily work routine.
Training modules
A total of 16 modules were taught over 17 months. While the initial batch was 63 participants, many dropped out because of retirement, transfers and lack of interest. This was further compounded by extraneous factors like a doctor’s strike, year ending pressures and clashes with other training programmes.
The duration of the training was form June 2009 to December 2010.
<strong>Topics</strong>
- Public health
- Planning
- Administrative & Financial procedures
- Supervision, Quality of care
- Monitoring
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Conflict resolution
- Motivation
- Role of panchayats and two clinical topics.
