Prof T Sundararaman, Dean, School of Health System Studies, TISS, elaborates more about TISS contribution on public healthcare space, in an interaction with Sanjiv Das
What are the top priorities which should be taken into account in public healthcare.
- Development of appropriate human resources for serving the majority of population, most of whom face different degrees of economic and social deprivations.
- Increasing the level of investment from state and central government to enhance public health.
- Inter-sectoral convergence and action to addresses major social determinants of health, especially related to safe water, sanitation, air pollution and nutrition.
What are the maladies affecting the Indian public health system?
- Low investment in development of public health facilities.
- Lack of proper regulations for the private sector.
UHC is one of our major goals. What are the steps needed to ramp up and evolve the role of the public health sector in attaining this objective?
Increase investment, build effective district-level models and scale up systematically over the next five to ten years.
Improved accountability of public health facilities and functionality is also important. Building partnerships with civil society organisations and public service minded private sector organisations are also necessary.
As the Dean of TISS, what recommendations would you like to put forth to make public health more accessible?
Our internships should focus on public health. The interns should be posted where they are engaged in more fieldwork and problem solving. We should encourage practitioners to serve as visiting faculty or guest lecturers. We should also encourage and provide for existing permanent faculty to go on deputations to work on implementation of public health programmes for a period of one to three years.
Course content should deal with more real life case studies which demonstrate the problem the system faces and how counter – intuitive, innovative solutions could help in problem solving.
What has been TISS’ contribution to build an effective public health system which promotes research and teaching to improve professional practice to prevent disease and promote health?
TISS already has a very robust programme for internship and field practicum. They are designed to engage students in real life situations where they are mentored both by senior practitioners as well as faculty from the school. The school faculty also take up the implementation of a number of research projects which help to build their capacity in this area.
TISS faculty also serve on a number of policy making committees where their knowledge can be of use to guide policy.