The first meeting of the National Advisory Board for the COHESION-I research project in Nepal was held on November 28, 2023, in Kathmandu, where the Nepalese team members collected comments, suggestions, and feedback to improve the project.
The meeting was attended by the COHESION-I team members from Nepal and the National Advisory Board members. The meeting started with a warm welcome by Prof. Sanjib Kumar Sharma, Country’s Principal Investigator indicating that this meeting was a huge opportunity for the Nepalese context to develop a sustainable modality of interventions for health system strengthening. Prof. Sharma presented an overview of the research project objectives and relevance in the current scenario and how this study will help the country’s health system.
In addition, Dr. Suman Bahadur Singh, explained in detail the research project objectives and methodology and highlighted the progress including a further plan of action. The proposal for the co-design component was discussed along with the implementation components.
After the research project team presented the information about COHESION-I, the National Advisory Board provided their suggestions. Some of the main recommendations were: Dr. Madan Kumar Upadhyaya, highlighted the policy return that this research project could have to inform future health system policy development, and he focused on the purpose of the evaluation component. However, he advised that the capacity building of the healthcare workers should be custom-designed based on the competency of healthcare workers. From another perspective, Dr. Abhinav Vaidya suggested aligning with other government programs and linking with the multisectoral action plan. He also emphasized building the consortium for health systems research to work together in the future for continuity.
Furthermore, Dr. Phanindra Prasad Baral remarked on the importance and linkage with national programs related to NCDs. He also highlighted the Female Community Health Volunteers’ (FCHV) engagement at the community level to strengthen primary health care. On the other hand, Mr. Gyan Bahadur Basnet asserted the importance of the health system strengthening agenda and pointed out that the findings from the project can be scaled up gradually to the national level. Finally, Dr. Usha Bhandari, who also serves as a member of the External Advisory Board of the project, had suggestions about the research study design and ethical considerations while implementing the intervention at the community level. She focused on how measures for subjective components may be challenging to assess the implementation outcomes.
National Advisory Board members in Nepal
| NAME | AFFILIATION(S) |
| Dr. Abhinav Vaidya | Professor of Community Medicine |
| Mr. Gyan Bahadur Basnet | Director of Provincial Health Directorate |
| Dr. Madan Kumar Upadhyaya | Official from the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) |
| Dr. Phanindra Prasad Baral | Focal person for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) at MoHP |
| Dr. Usha Bhandari | Senior Program Officer/Technical and VocationalEducation and Training Expert – Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC, Embassy of Switzerland in Nepal |