Winner of Family Planning Champion 2017

Garima Mathias - 2017 Winner

Position: Project Manager

Organization: Ipas Development Foundation

Current Location: New Delhi

MBA in Health Management from Indian Institute of Health Management Research

Additional Degrees and Certifications:

Attended Management Development Programme on:
Managing Gender Issues In Health Care at IIHMR Jaipur
Data Analysis and Interpretations for Monitoring at IIM Ahmedabad.

Describe your contributions to and achievements in family planning.

Starting with my first job as a NRHM District Program Manager in Gujarat, my decade long work has focused mainly on family planning. It provided me an opportunity to learn, implement & monitor various RCH programs. Regular engagement with various cadres of health care providers helped me gain deep insight about the public health sector. Presently, I am working on a comprehensive contraceptive project serving vulnerable rural women in over 450 public health facilities. In this project, I developed mechanism for post training support to help HSPs provide consistent services to the rural women coming to public facilities. I was also a part of the national level team that conceptualized and implemented an IUCD service reporting and monitoring software which has been approved by NHM, GoI.

What sparked your passion for family planning?

While pursuing my PG in health management I realized that FP services, if provided timely & accepted willingly, can significantly reduce maternal & child mortality & morbidity. As a DPM in Gujarat my regular interaction with service providers, CHWs & rural women helped me understand their expectation from health system. The realization that there is a huge unmet need for family planning services and information related to the same spurred me in channelizing my efforts towards providing quality FP services.

Give one or two examples of how you display leadership in your family planning work.:

I took lead to strengthen team’s capacity for implementing the onsite contraception training, a relatively new concept in public sector. The aim is to make services accessible to the rural women and men by training providers at their sites so that there is minimal disruption of regular services.
I was a member of the design team for conceptualizing a client follow-up mechanism for following-up IUCD clients. Formats developed for this have been adopted by MP Health department for use by ANMs.

If you are named a winner of 120 under 40, how will you use this new platform and the $1000 grant to advance your work? :

I shall use the forum and the grant to develop innovative strategies and tools for engaging the young people in selected rural areas. Focus will be on creating SRHR awareness among youth using a combination of conventional and technology based tools in local language that are easy to understand and use. The aim would be to develop them as community leaders and educators.