INSPIRE2CARE PROGRAM – A comprehensive study of household, health facility and disability assessment

Background

Good health and wellbeing is one of the key component for sustainable development. Due to concerted efforts from government and non-government organizations, significant achievements have been made in health indicators of Ilam district. However, in response to the need of disability inclusive development, there is limited knowledge, expertise and research regarding socio-economic factors, assessment of functioning to determine prevalence of disability, wellbeing and quality of life of people living with disability (PLWD), awareness of the rights of people with disability, barriers and facilitators to participation of people with disability in their community.

HERD International conducted a baseline study in selected sites of Ilam District for Karuna Foundation Nepal. Karuna Foundation Nepal through its intervention (Inspire2Care Program) aimed to address these challenges to help prevent avoidable disabilities among children and improve quality of lives of children and adults with disabilities and bring progressive changes in the lives of family at risk.

General Objective

The general objective of the baseline study was to collect comprehensive information on households demographic, health and health service utilization status, assess health facilities’ readiness and assess prevalence of disability and current status of persons with disabilities among people of Ilam district.

Specific objective

1. To collect basic demographic and socio economic information of households
2. To identify access to and utilization of Maternal, Neonatal and Child health (MNCH) and nutritional services
3. To identify attitude and perception of mothers’ and fathers’ groups on access to and utilization of MNCH services
4. To assess health and nutritional status of mothers and children
5. To assess prevalence of disability and current status (social, health, education, livelihood and empowerment) of persons with disabilities
6. To determine the status of child protection in the community
7. To explore the functionality of community support system in realizing their goals and local resource mobilization in each field and in a newly restructured scenario of the country.

Methodology

The study was descriptive cross-sectional baseline study using mixed methods which included formative quantitative and qualitative components. The study tried to explore three different dimensions in Ilam district: 1) households level demographic and health information – 746, health facilities’ readiness – 24 and disability prevalence and status of person with disabilities – 2195. The qualitative assessment was done by focus group discussions and semi structured interviews with female community health volunteers, mothers group of selected clusters and key focal persons of related stakeholders.

Project focal person

This project’s focal person is Dr. Pankaj Joshi