Sudipto Roy

Project: Care-seeking practices of and barriers to care-seeking for pneumonia in children aged less than five years in tribal and non-tribal rural areas of Pune district, India

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) guidelines and the integrated Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD), both recognise family and community engagement as a crucial component to tackling childhood pneumonia.

While recognition of signs and symptoms of pneumonia is the first step, timely and appropriate care-seeking is a crucial factor toward pneumonia management in children under five.

This factor is highly modifiable and interventions can be designed within existing health systems to ensure a high proportion of timely and appropriate care-seeking. However, to be able to do this, there is a need to understand the types of prevalent care-seeking practices, factors influencing care-seeking and barriers to care-seeking for pneumonia in under-five children with context to regional characteristics and settings.

Aim and impact

The aim of this PhD is to determine care-seeking practices and identify influencing factors of, and barriers to, care-seeking for signs and symptoms of pneumonia in children aged between 2-59 months residing in tribal and non-tribal rural areas in Pune district, India.

The results of the study will help to identify both common and regional-specific determinants of care-seeking – a crucial step to developing and implementing effective interventions, preferably within existing health systems, to improve care-seeking practices.

Further, a comparison between the two areas would provide greater insights into care-seeking practices in two different settings (a resource poor tribal area and a non-tribal rural area with relatively better resources) and if there are any differentials in how various factors influence care-seeking in these two settings.

Project data

Download the project Data Management Plan

View the project metadata on the Health Data Research Innovation Gateway

About me

I’m a medical doctor with an MD in Community Medicine and have been involved in public health research for the past few years. I would like to see myself as an independent responsible public health practitioner with capacity of understanding national/global public health priorities, writing research studies, leading multi-disciplinary teams of researchers in conducting research studies, data management as well as data analysis and dissemination of research findings to all stakeholders including community, academia, researchers and policy makers.

Three-Minute Thesis-Style Video Competition

For the RESPIRE ASM Showcase on the 24th November 2020, the RESPIRE PhD students recorded videos explaining their research, as part of a Three-Minute Thesis-Style Video Competition. Watch Sudipto's presentation below.