Outreach

Sama – Resource Group for Women and Health works closely with a wide range of organisations and collectives, including community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, women’s groups and collectives, health networks and coalitions, youth groups, health care providers, frontline workers, medical professionals, legal networks, students, researchers and academia.

We collaborate with research institutions such as the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), educational institutions such as IGNOU, autonomous bodies like the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Commission for Women (NCW), National and Regional Associations of health professionals and doctors as well as other service providers such as the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) and the Association of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists of Delhi (AOGD), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), National Health Resource Centre (NHSRC), Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) and Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD).

We also engage with academic institutions and women’s and health networks internationally on specific themes.

Intervention strategies

Our interventions involve developing pedagogies and initiating discourses and interactions to enable people to realise their entitlements towards health in more effective and sustainable ways. We use a range of intervention strategies, which are:

Through these interlinked core strategies, we enable the creation and strengthening of perspectives and advocacy efforts on public health and women’s health and rights, gender, and social determinants of health at diverse levels. Our capacity=building initiatives contribute to advocacy by providing a platform to articulate health needs and priorities, strengthen skills to carry out critical analysis, and develop leadership to support and strengthen community-based organisations. Research is used to substantiate advocacy efforts by documenting the marginalised health needs and concerns. Through the production and dissemination of knowledge resources such as reports, booklets, and policy briefs as well as through curricula development, we aim at furthering existing literature, discourse and tools on the intersection of health rights and gender justice.

In the last 24 years, we have trained and built the capacities, skills, and knowledge of over two thousand health and women’s groups, CSOs, health activists, health care providers, researchers, students, community leaders, and youth leaders from states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh through workshops, trainings, and orientations – at the community, state, regional, and national levels. Currently, we engage on a range of issues with diverse communities in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi.

The research and assessments on reproductive and sexual health, gender-based violence, access to health care, pandemics and public health, early marriage and mental health, reproductive and biotechnologies, gender and genetic disorders and non-communicable diseases expand the understanding of existing and emerging challenges to the health needs and concerns of communities, particularly of girls and women.

Given our well-established and expanding linkages at both the policy and grassroots levels, we are well positioned to facilitate the informing of policy initiatives based on ground realities, as well as to facilitate platforms for articulation, dissemination and critical analysis of health needs and priorities by community-based organisations, collectives, and women’s groups in rural and urban areas.

The creation of knowledge resources and their dissemination at diverse levels enables the broadening and deepening of discourses and information tools on the intersection of health rights and gender justice. Through the production and dissemination of knowledge resources such as reports, booklets, and policy briefs, as well as through curricula development, we aim to augment existing literature.

Our major purpose is to strengthen links between grassroots groups, women’s collectives, and frontline workers, as well as the wider coalition, in order to influence policy and achieve health rights. We also recognise the importance of fostering synergies for collective struggles and encourage linkages between the women’s movement, youth coalitions, health networks, bioethics movement, disability rights, and queer movements in order to facilitate the expression of diverse and informed perspectives towards a more nuanced understanding of health and access to healthcare for the most vulnerable and marginalised members of society.

Working on feminist principles of collaborations and partnerships, we have maintained close contacts with other women’s groups and networks, as well as progressive pro-poor organisations on multiple levels, ranging from organising events and conferences, joint advocacy efforts, capacity building, co-creating knowledge resources, and designing research and other interventions. These collaborations take place at local, national, as well as international levels.

During the COVID 19 pandemic, we followed a conscious path to address multiple issues related to the COVID 19 through a wide range of discussions and collective experiences, including relief work, capacity building and knowledge dissemination on COVID, home care, information on access to diagnostics and vaccines, as well as research, advocacy, webinars, and consultations. We have a dedicated webpage, Covid Canvases, on this engagement.

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