The book is intended for people who are passionate about public health or community medicine. It deals with a subject where the life begins in the family or community. Dealing with the issue of Home Based Newborn Care in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in India, it brings out all that can be done at home to save newborns. The newborn phase is only during the first month of life. The book deals with the triad for newborns such as food, warmth and security.
Academically, the book deals with the various indicators through the eyes of the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) in India. These are daughters-in-law who are volunteers to work on health issues at the village level. They are appointed by the Local Self Governments and are attached to the Public Health System who pays them honorariums for the various services that they do. Home Based Newborn Care is one of their tasks where they are scheduled to visit homes of newborns to give need based counseling. There are about 1 million ASHAs in India currently.
In four districts of the state of UP covering all the four economic regions, the book has interviews of 250 ASHAs and 500 mothers who had a child in the age group of 3 to 6 months at the time of the data collection for the study during 2016-2017. It has also qualitative information about 20 mothers of Scheduled Caste communities who lag behind socially, politically and economically.
In addition, it has qualitative inputs form 5 stakeholders who look after newborn care in the public health system. The book is the Ph.D. thesis of the author. Readers especially students will learn about academic writing, developing research tools, collection of data, analysis of data, interpretation of data and writing of chapters. The flow of writing and thoughts are also critical and readers will get an opportunity to enhance their skills on academic writing. The book will help them to write dissertations/thesis and books in future that are relevant academically.
|