Last updated on: May 02, 2025 by Avni Team
Over the last 45 years, the Institute of Health Management Pachod (IHMP) – a non-profit organisation – has been at the forefront of addressing critical public health issues faced by disadvantaged communities in India. Since its establishment in 1979, IHMP has positively impacted over seven million people, focusing on maternal and neonatal health, child health, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, and adolescent health and development.
A major focus over the last 25 years has been on safeguarding and transforming the lives of vulnerable adolescent girls in rural and urban slum communities.
IHMP has provided life skills education to 103,000 unmarried girls, delaying marriage age from 14.5 to 18 years, while also engaging 8,600 boys and young men to prevent child marriage and promote gender-equitable behaviours.
The Life skills Education for adolescent girls was scaled up through a network of 7 NGOs with equally encouraging results similar to the pilot project.
IHMP’s sexual and reproductive health interventions have reached over 127,000 married adolescent girls, significantly increasing contraceptive use, delaying first pregnancies, and reducing maternal, neonatal and child morbidity and mortality.
The villages of central Maharashtra and the urban slums of Pune presented several public health challenges:
IHMP’s Integrated Reproductive and Sexual Health and Family Planning Project focused on:
The intervention relied on a community-based model, led by ASHA workers through regular home visits, paper-based registers, and monthly micro-plans. This manual model laid a strong foundation for scaling up.
The interventions were scaled through a network of NGOs in 120 villages in 5 of the most backward districts of Maharashtra. The impact of the interventions were reported in The Lancet as follows:
Efficacy of an intervention for improving the reproductive and sexual health of married adolescent girls and addressing the adverse consequences of early motherhood
Findings:
Age at first birth:
Contraceptive use:
Early antenatal registration:
Minimum standard antenatal care received:
Treatment for antenatal complications:
Treatment for postnatal/neonatal complications:
Treatment for reproductive tract/sexually transmitted infections (RTI/STI):
HIV testing:
Interpretation: Focused, community based interventions, implemented by frontline health workers result in a rapid and significant improvement in utilization and coverage with reproductive health services among married adolescent girls. The interventions were implemented primarily through community health workers and auxiliary nurse midwives. With more than 900 000 community health workers and 140 000 auxiliary nurse midwives providing primary level care in India, replication of this strategy seems imminently feasible.
Eventually the intervention was successfully scaled up through 7 primary health centres, in one block, exclusively through the Government health delivery system
Despite successful interventions, service delivery inefficiencies emerged:
To overcome these, IHMP adopted the Avni platform, digitizing healthcare delivery across urban slums and rural villages.
Key features of the Avni app:
The digital intervention led to significant improvements:
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IHMP’s work in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region and Pune’s urban slums shows how digital tools like the Avni app can strengthen public health interventions. By enabling early identification of health needs, real-time monitoring, and effective counselling, the project has improved health outcomes for adolescent girls and young women in vulnerable communities.
The model IHMP has developed is highly replicable and scalable—both in terms of its community-based strategy and the digital infrastructure powered by Avni.
If you're interested in adopting a similar approach or want to learn more about how the Avni platform can support your initiatives:
Let’s work together to scale impactful solutions for better health outcomes.