Control of Non-Communicable Diseases

With the  India Research Center (IRC)

Dr Shilpa Bhupathiraju, Assistant Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is working with the Ambuja Cement Foundation to evaluate the foundation’s CSR program on comprehensive management of non-communicable diseases (NCD) with a focus on prevention of Hypertension and Diabetes. IRC is currently running an evaluation of the NCD intervention through a stepped-wedged trial covering 12 villages in Bhatinda, Punjab. Dr Lindsay Jaacks, the former PI of the research study, and Dr Bhupathiraju have designed the research protocol. The study has run over a few years in the same communities, and the endline was conducted in January 2023. The study is unique, given that it is one of the attempts to estimate the prevalence of high-risk CBAC scores in a large population-based sample. Given that the Government of India aims to undertake population-based screening of all adults for Non-Communicable Diseases, the results of this study are directly translatable for policy action.

The India Research Center held its inaugural symposium on NCDs with the goal of discussing evidence-based best practices from around the globe and emerging models and potential solutions for the Indian context. Learn more here
The findings from theis baseline were published in an article titled “A community-based noncommunicable disease prevention intervention in Punjab, India: Baseline characteristics of 11,322 adults” in the *Indian Journal of Community Medicine*. The article describes the results of a large-scale, community-based non-communicable diseases screening conducted in Punjab, India, using the Government of India’s Community Based Assessment Checklist (CBAC) scoring system. (Read more here – https://journals.lww.com/ijcm/Fulltext/2022/47010/A_Community_Based_Noncommunicable_Disease.6.aspx). Learnings from the baseline and publication were discussed in a webinar in April, 2022. The project is in its final stages with an evaluation of the entire intervention from baseline to endline.