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Rural Health
ICTPH Partners to Enhance Rural Health
This partnership will bring together the strengths of Penn
Nursing to establish and evaluate nursing models
To increase access to healthcare services and improve health outcomes for rural
populations, IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health (ICTPH) has partnered
with the University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing, US to pilot the functionality
and viability of nurse-managed Rural Micro Health Centres (RMHC) in Tamil Nadu.
ICTPH is a not-for-profit research organisation based at the IKP Knowledge Park
in Hyderabad.
Through the first stage of the partnership, which was signed in January and
remains in effect until the end of the year, Penn Nursing faculty will collaborate
with the ICTPH team to develop Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) education in India,
enhance census survey data analysis, and work on other areas of research. The
full impact of the partnership is expected to last years.
Said N Vaghul, Chairman, IKP Trust, "IKP's Knowledge Park in Hyderabad
has developed a decade long tradition as an innovation hub in R&D and incubation
for the pharmaceutical and chemical sector. ICTPH has now added another dimension
to our work at IKP by connecting research, both in the diagnostic and healthcare
delivery domain, to the urgent needs of developing countries. Our partnership
with Penn Nursing provides an excellent platform for conceptualising ICTPH as
a Centre for Excellence, focused on enhancing research capabilities for human
resources within the health sector."
On this development, Dr Zeena Johar, President, ICTPH, said, "This partnership
provides an opportunity for ICTPH to unlock and translate the Penn Nursing legacy
of pioneering the US nurse practitioner movement for the Indian subcontinent.
We aim to critically evaluate various healthcare delivery models in order to
achieve the appropriate balance between technically qualified medical personnel
and local village outreach health volunteers addressing observed issues of accessibility
and affordability."
"This partnership will bring together the strengths of Penn Nursing to
establish and evaluate nursing models of care and ICTPH's innovations in public
health to build nursing capacity and creatively resolve gaps in primary health
care for rural India," said Penn Nursing professor Eileen Sullivan-Marx,
who will recruit Penn nurses for the project, provide educational consultation,
develop and evaluate the strategies to provide APN care at RMHCs.
"Penn has a global mission and we encourage our students to learn in global
environments and sustain relationship with the world community. This partnership
is also a way to develop nursing in India, as an alternative to the emigration
of nurses from India to other parts of the world. By developing internal models
of nursing care in India that use APN in partnership with community health workers
and other professions, nurses will be more likely to return or stay in the country,"
said Penn Nursing Dean, Afaf I Meleis.
EH News Bureau
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