March 13, 2000
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded a $92,936 grant that will allow Richard Franke of Anthropology to study disease prevention and health care in Kerala.
The grant, part of a program designed to encourage collaborative efforts between First World and Third World institutions, will be shared by Montclair State University and the Kerala Health Studies and Research Centre in India. During the 18-month project, Franke will work with Dr. B. Ekbal, neurosurgeon and founder of the Centre, and Dr. Joy Elamon, a general practitioner there, to study community initiatives for effective low-cost disease prevention and health care delivery in Kerala.
"The Kerala experiment is unique because health decentralization is being carried out as part of a larger decentralization of government power," said Franke. "It is occurring in the context of a mass campaign designed to encourage activism by using local participation to overcome weaknesses in current health policies and practice in Kerala."
Several villages already have taken the initiative to develop health projects. Areas that most interest Franke include safe drinking water, latrine installation, health education, disease identification camps, upgrading subdistrict hospitals, and eradication campaigns against rabies, blindness and other specific health problems.
"After we analyze those projects to identify patterns, Doctors Ekbal, Elamon and I will develop a "how-to" manual for health activists that will suggest ideas for health care undertakings in all the villages of Kerala, as well as the international development community," said Franke. "We're also going to create an academic version with reference to international studies that will place the Kerala experiment in comparative literature."
Franke wants to show that Primary Health Centres (PHC) are better able to identify and serve local needs, and improve efficiency of higher levels of health services by sending fewer unnecessary cases to them. He also hopes to demonstrate the degree to which PHC better serve the poorest sections of the population and the ability of PHC staffs to work with elected local representatives and local assemblies of villagers to improve the design of disease prevention measures.
This project is more than an intellectual venture for Franke. He said the funding has given him a chance to do something that will benefit not only the people in Kerala, but students from Montclair State as well. Franke has been able to hire a student assistant, is planning seminars and other activities, and next year will bring Ekbal and Elamon to Montclair State for a month as visiting scholars.
"It's a great honor and a privilege to work on this and other projects in Kerala," said Franke. "I've met so many outstanding, dedicated scholars who very much want their work to be used to benefit the people in their communities. Although I haven't studied or written in the health area, it's an opportunity for me to test some ideas I've developed in research and related areas such as agriculture, ecology and social structure, and see how they might fit into the health area."