The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched in 2005, seeks to enhance the quality of health care available to India’s rural population and strengthen public health systems. One of its core strategies is the promotion of decentralised planning and implementation particularly at the district level. It is in this context that the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh, which has developed and implemented Chhattisgarh’s state-wide rural community health worker programme, has endeavoured to establish the Public Health Resource Network (PHRN).  This is with a view to enhance the capacity in various states at the district level in providing quality health services and planning and implementing the NRHM to meet its full potential. 

The PHRN is a programme for the sharing of technical resources across district and state health societies, resource support agencies and NGO networks through a distance education programme. It also seeks to engage dedicated individuals in these organisations with essential information, a diversity of views, access to resources and sensitisation to ongoing debates.  The PHRN focuses on strengthening technical capacity by covering issues such as the evaluation of district level health needs, understanding socio-economic and political determinants of health, designing and implementing contextualised behaviour change communication initiatives, engaging with governance issues, prevention and control of communicable diseases, prioritising resource allocation as well as developing process and outcome indicators. The programme is being coordinated by the State Health Resource Centre and implemented in partnership with civil society groups in various states. The first phase is rolling out in the states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa from 2006 to 2008.

Of a total of sixteen books, ‘Introduction to Public Health Systems’, ‘Reduction of Maternal Mortality’, ‘Accelerating Child Survival’, ‘Community Mobilisation and Community Health Workers’, and ‘Behaviour Change Communication and Training’, are the first five titles that have been published as material for the distance education programme.  The roll out of the first phase, while a strong civil society initiative, is benefiting from active partnerships with the Government of India as well as each of the four State Governments.