The George Institute awarded $350K grant to map health issues from climate-driven food insecurity in Central Java
A joint Australian-Indonesian research project led by The George Institute’s Health Systems Science team has been selected to receive an inaugural KONEKSI Collaborative Research Grant - Environment and Climate Change.
One of only 38 high‐quality projects chosen from 611 proposals, Exploring links between food security and health to inform policy and service priorities for the northern coast of Central Java aims to build a robust picture of the impacts of climate change and other environmental factors on dietary patterns and disease in people living in three flood-prone districts of Java, the world's most populous island.
Dr Anna Palagyi, Lead Researcher and Program Lead - Ageing and Health Systems at The George Institute for Global Health, said there is a need to formalise the largely anecdotal evidence on the impact of climate change on food security and health for vulnerable coastal communities in Indonesia.
“The limited evidence available highlights significant disease burden from poor nutrition, hygiene and sanitation in villages impacted by tidal floods,” she said. “Rising sea levels and more extreme weather events in the past two decades have caused severe erosion of the northern coast of Central Java.
“Encroaching sea water has destroyed houses, crops and fishery infrastructure, placing the livelihoods of tens of millions of people living in this region at risk. Illegal sand mining, rapid development and inadequate protection measures are compounding the problem,” Dr Palagyi added.
Diverse disciplines involved in the project will collate and analyse policy, health and nutrition data from a wide range of sources (the oldest records date from the mid-1990s). Researchers in social science, food and nutrition, climate mitigation policy and agricultural economics will work alongside grassroots environmental activist groups to formally understand the scale of the issues.
Inundation and sediment deposit in Semarang, Pekalongan and Demak - home to 36 coastal villages of varying scale and development - makes land unviable and shrinks aquaculture reserves, severely impairing subsistence food production and cutting off opportunities for agriculture and fishery production - the primary sources of income for most families.
“At the moment, communities are forced to adapt to these problems with limited government support. Low quality replacement housing, inadequate fresh food and water supply, and poor sanitation are directly impacting the health of the community,” explained Dr Palagyi.
“Ultimately, our goal is to use robust, contextual evidence to work with local communities and decision makers to co-design practical policy and intervention strategies that will strengthen community resilience to the harms from climate change-induced food insecurity and its negative health impacts,” she said.
The project brings together three partner academic institutions in Australia and Indonesia – The George Institute, Universitas Brawijaya and Universitas Sebelas Maret – and extends and strengthens the advocacy-policy partnership of these institutions with two Indonesian non-government partners - The Institute for Social Research, Democracy and Social Justice (Percik) and The Habibie Center.
KONEKSI (Collaboration for Knowledge, Innovation, and Technology Australia and Indonesia) is a knowledge partnership platform funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia for a five-year (2023-2027) period. KONEKSI aims to achieve an enduring relationship between Indonesia and Australia that advances mutual interest and supports Indonesia’s inclusive and sustainable development, by increasing the use of knowledge-based solutions and technologies. It will bring people together to jointly identify problems and solutions, create partnerships and extend networks. The 38 knowledge partnerships supported by the inaugural grants involve 85 organisations in Indonesia and 23 in Australia.
The George Institute joins global gathering to advance gender equality
The Women Deliver 2023 Conference will be held in-person and virtually from July 17–20, 2023, in Kigali, Rwanda. One of the largest multi-sectoral gatherings to advance gender equality, the conference will bring together 6,000 attendees in person and more than 200,000 online, including high-profile speakers such as Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, and the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.
The George Institute will be joining the conference to share research insights from the Global Women’s Health Program, and raise awareness of the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on women and girls, which poses a growing threat to hard-fought progress on gender equality. The Institute’s representatives will promote the case for integrating NCD services into maternal and child health programmes, and for better disaggregation and analysis of data to understand how sex and gender affect health.
Girls and women living with NCDs experience specific challenges in accessing prevention, early diagnosis, treatment, and care, particularly in low-resource contexts. These include low prioritisation of women’s health within families, limited access to financial resources to cover the costs, women’s and girls’ caring responsibilities, and restrictions on their ability to travel freely, to name a few.
"Gender equity has to be at the heart of health policy, research, and action and we have a long way to go. With actors and allies coming together at Women Deliver 2023, I am looking forward to participating in discussions with individuals and groups with similar interests, intentions, and work," said Misimi Kakoti, Research Officer at The George Institute India.
"I wish to bring back home perspectives, experiences, and relationships that can enrich the work on gender equity and health that I have been involved with and beyond."
The George Institute will be co-hosting the following events at the conference:
'Taking stock towards building a more equitable non-communicable disease ready health care system’ (Tuesday 18 July at 13:30-15:00 Kigali (MH 3.2))
In its capacity as the secretariat for the Taskforce on Women and NCDs, The George Institute for Global Health India will be co-hosting an in-person session with the NCDI Poverty Network and Rwanda NCD Alliance. The event will assess ongoing advocacy efforts, showcase new research, and consider frontline experiences to identify opportunities to build an integrated, equitable and sustainable healthcare system. The audience will convene in discussion groups to explore barriers and opportunities for progress, including strategies to improve collaboration across the gender equity and maternal child health movements. Learn more here.
"The prevention and management of NCDs and promotion of health, particularly in populations facing constraints in awareness, agency, and access to health services, call for the coming together of communities, advocates, governments and industry," said Dr Josyula K. Lakshmi, Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute India, who will be one of the speakers at the event.
"The deliberations on NCDs and women at Women Deliver 2023 promise advances in gender equity and NCD preparedness, especially in low-resource contexts."
'Feminist solutions to address gender inequities in NCD prevention and control’ (Wednesday 19 July at 10:45 to 12:00 Kigali)
Co-hosted with the World Health Organization, this virtual session will convene high-level leaders, grassroots innovators, researchers, and advocates to promote a call-to-actionhighlighting the gendered barriers to access for NCD prevention, early diagnosis, treatment, and care.
Panellists will highlight how gender impacts NCD risk, access to care and health outcomes, and describe how feminist solutions to addressing NCDs can reduce discrimination, empower generational changemakers and realise global commitments to reduce deaths from NCDs.
The session builds on a side event held on 6 March at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, which saw the First Ladies of Liberia and Gambia highlight the persistent gaps faced by women and girls in accessing NCD-related information, prevention, timely diagnosis, services, and support.
Please note that you must be registered for Women Deliver to attend both events. More information about the conference can be accessed here.
The NCD Alliance will be hosting a stall to share information on NCDs and how they impact women and girls, and to gather ideas from participants on how prevention and care of NCDs can be better integrated into the sustainable development response for women. Visit the stall to access resources and learn more about the Global Week for Action on NCDs campaign and how to get involved.
The Taskforce on Women and NCDs is a network bringing together leading global health organisations from the women’s health and NCD communities to improve women’s health by expanding programs to meet women’s needs across the lifecycle.
The recording for the CSW 67 side-event, co-hosted by the WHO and the Republics of Liberia and Gambia, focusing on “Gender equity and rights in the prevention and control of NCDs: The role of digital health” can be accessed here.
HENI Equilogue: the journey of the Right to Health in Rajasthan: contestations, lessons, and the way forward
Background
The Government of Rajasthan enacted the Rajasthan Right to Health Care (RTH) Act 2023 on 21st March 2023. This is a historic event setting a precedence for other states in India around the imperative to legally recognise the right to health. The economic and health indicators of Rajasthan throw light on the prevailing challenges around accessing healthcare services afflicting the people of the state. The enactment of the Rajasthan RTH Act is expected to address these challenges with obligatory attention paid to protecting families from catastrophic health expenditures.
This act owes its design and enactment to years of advocacy by Civil Society Organizations (CSO) in the state with a pioneering role played by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan’s (JSA) Rajasthan Chapter. From drafting a prototype of the bill to resisting the government’s attempts at narrowing the scope, JSA has been holding the government accountable for years to deliver on a legal reform with equity and justice at its core.
It is our pleasure to invite you to the 22nd Equilogue of the Health Equity Network India (HENI) which is hosting Chhaya Pachauli from the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan – Rajasthan Chapter to take us through the years of journey of the movement that shaped the design and enactment of Rajasthan Right to Health Care Act 2023 and the related contestations. She will throw light upon the provisions of the Act that speaks true to ‘right’ to health, the challenges confronting its implementation, and also discuss the lessons that act has for the rest of the country and the way forward.
Mark your calendars for 14th July 2023 | Friday | 1530-1700 IST
Format of the session: A Fireside Chat will be hosted by Devaki Nambiar with Chhaya Pachauli to provoke reflections on questions related to the history, lessons, and the way forward for the Right to Health Care Act of Rajasthan. The chat will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Chhaya Pachauli is associated with the organization Prayas and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), the Indian chapter of People’s Health Movement (a worldwide network advocating for health rights), and has more than seventeen years of experience of working closely with the rural and tribal communities, especially in the state of Rajasthan, on diverse areas related to health, nutrition and access to medicines. She comes with wide expertise in community engagement in health care planning, monitoring, and policy advocacy. She has been one of the leading members in the “right to free medicines” campaign in Rajasthan, a successful campaign which led to the formulation and launch of “Free Medicines Scheme” in the state in the year 2011. She has since been part of several studies and interventions aimed at evolving systems and policies which augment people’s access to essential medicines and enforce rational treatment and prescription practices. She had lately been co-leading the campaign for “Right to Health Act” in Rajasthan which in March 2023 led to the enactment of first ever law on Right to Health by any state in the country. She is the Rajasthan State Coordinator for Jan Swasthya Abhiyan and is also the member of Centre for Cultures of Reproduction, Technologies and Health (CORTH) of the University of Sussex which focuses on analyses of the intersections between cultures of human reproduction, social identities, health and technologies.
Fireside chat host: Devaki Nambiar
Devaki Nambiar is Program Director, Healthier Societies Strategy at the George Institute for Global Health India with appointments at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India, the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA. She is a Health Policy and Systems Researcher (HPSRer) with over two decades of experience working in India and other Low- and Middle-Income Countries on decision-maker demand-driven research, postgraduate teaching in HPSR, as well as technical assistance with an emphasis on social exclusion, health equity and health for all. She is a former Fulbright, Fogarty, and NIH scholar, and Fellow of the Wellcome Trust/Department of Biotechnology India Alliance. She advises the WHO on health inequality monitoring, national programme re-orientation, and guideline development to leave no one behind. She serves on the Lancet-Chatham House Commission on Improving Population Health post COVID-19 and advises Lancet Commissions on Women and Cancer as well as on Reimagining India's Health System. She is a member of the People's Health Movement and the Medico Friends Circle. Dr. Nambiar received her doctorate in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009 and is a recipient of an Emerging Leader Award from the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.
