About

In 1994, Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) was started as a Research Centre of the Anusandhan Trust. CEHAT began as an experiment to bridge the gap between academic theory and grassroots practice

As a health research institution, CEHAT is not a conventional “people’s organisation,” and does not pretend to be so. But its identification with people’s movements and organisations is more in terms of selecting socially relevant, pro-people themes and topics for research to strengthen people’s health movement and to realise the right to health and health care. Our research is not undertaken with mere academic interests, rather we take efforts to share the findings with grassroots organisations and make the research findings usable for social change, campaigns and advocacy.

In our quest to build an institution having high professional standards with an explicit commitment towards the grassroots, we have gradually evolved and implemented four basic and complimentary principles: Social Relevance, Ethics, Democracy and Accountability.

Research Areas
social Relevance

Social Relevance

Human rights, equity and empowerment are not mere matters of information, but they hold a prominent place in the selection of themes and topics of the research.

Social Relevance

Ethics

Social research is not merely a ground for experimentation or an intellectual exercise to discover unexplored terrain; it's an advancement of a social commitment. We uphold high ethical and human rights standards while undertaking research, action and advocacy.

Social Revelance

Democracy

Human rights concerns from research processes guide the CEHAT’s internal environment i.e., institutionalisation of democracy in the internal structure and functioning of CEHAT.

Social Relevance

Accountability

Readiness for transparency, accountability and auditing is an integral part of sustaining democracy as well as autonomy of the research, researcher and the institution.

Our Aim

Our Aim

Socially relevant and rigorous academic health research and health action at CEHAT is for the well being of the disadvantaged masses, for strengthening people's health movements and for realising the right to health and health care. CEHAT acts as an interface between progressive people's movements and academia.

Our Strategies

Our Strategies

Undertake socially relevant research, advocacy and welfare projects on various socio-political aspects of health. Establish direct services and programmes to demonstrate how health services can be made accessible, equitably and ethically. Disseminate information through databases and relevant publications

Our Trustees

The Trustees of the Anusandhan Trust constitute the governing board of CEHAT. The Trustees are responsible for CEHAT’s vision and mission, provide guidance to researchers and the administration, and act as a sounding board and the final authority for grievance redressals.

Prof. Dr. Vibhuti Patel

Prof. Dr. Patel is an Economist and the Managing Trustee of Anusandhan Trust. She was a former Vice- President of Indian Association for Women’s Studies. Also a Expert Committee member of School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU, Delhi. Prof. Dr. Patel was a faculty at the Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences until her retirement in 2020.

Dr. Dhruv Mankad

Dr. Mankad is a graduate in medicine and a leading spokesperson on Primary Health Care in Maharashtra. Dr. Mankad is currently on the VACHAN Board as the Secretary and is a consultant with HCL Foundation, Noida. A former MacArthur Fellow, he also has prior experience working as a senior consultant with the School of Health Science, Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, BAIF, Tata Trust, Action Aid, UNFPA, and many more organisations.

Dr. Padmini Swaminathan

Dr. Swaminathan’s work is focused on industrial organisation, labour, occupational health and skill development – from a gender perspective. She is the former Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, where she also held the post of the Reserve Bank of India Chair in Regional Economics till her retirement from the Institute in 2011. Afterwhich, she was Professor and Chairperson of the School of Livelihoods and Development, TISS Hyderabad until 2017. Currently, she is on the editorial boards of several journals including Gender Technology and Development, and the Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She is a Board member of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi; SAMA-Resource Centre for Women, New Delhi; Anusandhan Trust, Mumbai.

Dr. Padma Prakash

Dr. Prakash is a sociologist, academic journalist, and women’s rights activist with a specialisation in the sociology of medicine and health and the sociology of sports. She is a Editor/Director, eSocialSciences, an Asia focused repository and publication space, a unit of IRIS Knowledge Foundation. She was formerly Acting Editor/Associate Editor of Economic and Political Weekly.

Dr. Jaya Sagade

Dr. Sagade retired as Director of Women’s Studies Centre and Vice-Principal at ILS Law College, Pune, where she taught Women and the Law, Family Law and Human Rights for 32 years. Her research and publications are focused on gender equality, women’s rights, and right to health. Dr. Sagade has worked extensively with national and international academic institutions and NGOs, UN agencies such as WHO, and the Government of India and Maharashtra.

Dr. Mohan Deshpande

Dr. Deshpande gave up his clinical practice in 1993 and began working in the field of Health Communication for 27 years. Dr. Deshpanded founded Aarogya Bhan Collective (AaBha) to champion Health Communication as rights based work that is firmly rooted in community engagement. He has been able to reach out to about more than 30,000 people through its various activities and training workshops. He has worked with children, teachers, youth, various health service providers (ASHAs, Anganwadis, doctors etc) ashram schools, sex workers, NGOs, and govt agencies and is associated with 67 organisations through this work. 

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