About

During the three years since its formation, CommonHealth has implemented a wide range of activities to further its objectives. While maintaining maternal and newborn health and safe abortion as its focus, the activities undertaken within these themes have varied in response to the situation at hand. For example, activities around maternal health were mainly around local advocacy and capacity-building, while activities around safe abortion have combined campaigning at the national level with local advocacy and capacity-building. 

Aimed Activities

  • Individual evidence based advocacy projects focussing on specific problems from across the country supported by the coalition.
  • Training courses for different groups of stakeholders, on advocacy, research skills or specific content areas.
  • Preparation of regular report cards on the state of maternal-neonatal health and safe abortion in different states, along with analysis on state specific policies.
  • Consolidation and dissemination of latest information (especially in local languages) aimed at health providers, decision-makers and key actors at the community level.
  • Organising thematic meetings and conferences and systematic reviews to highlight specific themes in conjunction with other allies.
  • Providing study tours, learning exchanges and documentation of innovations and good practices within the public sector, private sector and the NGO sector.

CommonHealth has been led by a Steering Committee with seven elected and two ex-officio members and active general body members’ participation in implementation of activities through advocacy projects. Currently, the Coalition Secretariat is housed in CHSJ, a member institution of CommonHealth.

The Steering Committee currently in place (2009)

  • TK Sundari Ravindran, RUWSEC, Tamil Nadu (Chairperson)
  • Renu Khanna, SAHAJ, Baroda (Financial Advisor)
  • Lindsay Barnes, Jan Chetna Manch, Bokaro (Elected Member)
  • Abhijit Das, CHSJ, New Delhi (Elected Member)
  • Sunil Kaul, The Ant, Assam (Elected Member)
  • Sunita Singh, CHSJ, New Delhi (Elected Member)
  • Suchitra Dalvie, Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP), Mumbai (Elected Member)
  • Sharad Iyengar, ARTH, Udaipur (Ex-Officio Steering Committee Member)
  • Leena Uppal (Coordinator, Ex-Officio Steering Committee Member)

Our supporters

  • International Women’s Health Coalition www.iwhc.org 
  • Centre for Health and Social Justice www.chsj.org
  • MacArthur Foundation www.macfound.org
  • Packard Foundation www.packard.org
  • Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Trivandrum
  • Contributions from Steering Committee member’s Organisational funds