Health Policy in Nepal: The Role of Community Health Workers

This event is co-sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's Asia Health Policy Program and the Center for South Asia

In this colloquium, Dr. Panday will first provide a brief overview of population health in Nepal and the country’s healthcare system. She will then discuss her research on community health, primary healthcare, and improving the health status of women and children in Nepal, focusing on the role of female community health volunteers in maternal health care provision.  Using participatory approaches (such as participatory video methods and policy workshops), the research team connected communities with policymakers, and is building upon that approach—in partnership with the local organisation PHASE Nepal—to improve utilisation of healthcare among marginalised populations in rural Nepal. 

Sarita Panday is the 2018-19 Developing Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center  (APARC). She is also an honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Politics, the University of Sheffield, UK and earned a PhD in Public Health from the same University. She has combined degrees in Masters in Public Health & Masters in Health Management from Australia; and a Bachelor in Science in Nursing from Nepal. Dr. Panday received in Australian Leadership Award and has ten years of research experience focused on health policy in South Asia, primarily Nepal.