We believe that child survival and development is one of the most urgent and significant challenges to India’s long-term growth, requiring immediate attention.

High levels of preventable child deaths and infant and child under nutrition persist in many parts of India, rooted in and mirroring the poor health and nutritional status of Indian girls and women. The nation’s indicators of child survival and development are some of the poorest in the world.

Such sub-optimal child development has implications for children’s ability to survive, resist infections and learn, often with an irreversibly negative impact on adult productivity and health.

Existing health and nutrition programmes in India suffer from gaps in quality and usually do not reach poor and high-risk populations. The public health system and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) – collectively mandated to provide key promotive, preventive and primary care to poor communities – face multiple constraints in planning, finance, human resource capacity and community participation.

Learn more about ICICI Group's CSR in the area of primary health.

In the area of primary health, ICICI Foundation collaborates with and supports the work of ICICI Centre for Child Health and Nutrition (ICCHN), an interdisciplinary grant making and research centre focused on the health and nutrition of vulnerable women, infants and young children across India.

To support large-scale and sustainable improvements in child survival and development in India, ICCHN’S work focuses on two fronts:

• Community-based strategies to improve household knowledge and practice on nutrition and health
• Strengthening primary health and nutrition systems to extend coverage and improve quality of essential services

Some of ICCHN’s initiatives include:

Supporting and scaling community health worker programmes – ICCHN supports initiatives that increase the effectiveness and impact of community health workers in diverse contexts.

For example, through its partner, the Chhattisgarh State Health Resource Centre, ICCHN works with community health workers known as Mitanins to increase community awareness about child nutrition and improve the accountability of food security schemes such as the ICDS, the school mid-day meal scheme and the Public Distribution System in the state. Learn more.

Strengthening community platforms and collective action for child health and nutrition – ICCHN works to integrate health and nutrition strategies within community development platforms and networks, including village committees, self-help groups, and others.

Under the Counsellors Programme supported by ICCHN in the predominantly tribal region of Melghat in Maharashtra, for example, local youths nominated by voluntary organisations are attached to a hospital with the objective of providing counselling for patients, establishing a dialogue between staff and patients and helping the patients access the required services. Learn more.

Strengthening public health systems – ICCHN works to strengthen public primary health systems, build decentralised capacities for planning and implementation, develop effective service delivery models, support frontline health workers, and strengthen referral systems.

ICCHN has supported, for example, the setting up of the Public Health Resource Network (PHRN), which offers a variety of capacity building programmes for local government health officials and public health practitioners in states with some of the poorest health indicators. Learn more.

Strengthening the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) – ICCHN works to mobilise the ICDS to improve the coverage, convergence and quality of nutrition counselling, growth promotion and food supplementation services. Learn more.