Samagra Arogya is a long-term place-based collaborative engagement to understand and respond to Social Determinants of Health at the Gram Panchayat level. First phase was initiated through a collaboration between KHPT and Design Beku situated in Vandse GP cluster (7 Grama Panchayats in Kundapura Taluk namely Vandse, Idur Kunjadi, Hemmadi, Hakladi, Chittur, Aluru, and Keradi). The first phase concluded in March 2024.
The second phase of Samagra Arogya commenced in May 2024 by Aruvu Collaboratory and KHPT, along with communities, elected representatives and PRIs in Vandse GP Cluster. We continued to engage incorporating and reflecting on the learnings from first phase to co-envision, to foster care-based practices in local self-governance systems in the Gram Panchayat regions. All actions of Aruvu are carried out through the ‘structure of engagement’ co-developed by its transdisciplinary team for Samagra Arogya to learn and visiblise the differential needs of the communities, co-designing people-centric interventions with communities and Gram Panchayat, creating moments to learn, adapt and advocate newer governance systems attuned to the place and its people in the GPs. The modes of engagement are of various forms such as codesign sessions, artefacts, fellowships, Community Mesh Network, Participatory Geospatial Lab, Incubation of local enterprises, and so on.
We envision each Gram Panchayat to be an autonomous, decentralised entity that carries out a continuous and sustained practice driven responses by participatory action research to understand the historic and emerging needs of their communities, to plan and iteratively implement interventions.