Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH)
Provides healthcare to the rural and tribal people in Gadchiroli district, empowers the communities to take care of their own health and conducts high-quality research to shape the local, national and global health policies.
Gadchiroli is one of the most impoverished districts in India with tribals constituting 40% of its population. The poverty, illiteracy and remoteness add to the huge health care challenges in this region.
Moved by the dire circumstances, visionaries Dr Rani andDr.Abhay Bang set up SEARCH in 1986, to live among the people and serve them. They dreamed of making affordable health care available locally to everyone and ultimately to empower the people to take care of their own health.
This vision is Arogya Swaraj.
“Our vision is to realize Arogya Swaraj: People’s Health in People’s Hands. Empowering individuals and communities to take charge of their own health, and thereby, help them achieve freedom from disease as well as dependence.”
– Dr. Abhay Bang, Founder, SEARCH
SEARCH has now been working among the rural and tribal poor and marginalised for over 30 years, reaching out to 134 villages. We work together with the community to find relevant solutions to rural health problems. We have developed a bond with the community based on trust and equity, a bond that is central to our pursuit of the four pillars of our work
SERVICE to prevent and treat the health problems
EDUCATION to impart knowledge on health
Original RESEARCH to further this knowledge
Shaping POLICY to disseminate our methods
SEARCH, today, is recognised as a global leader amongst public health institutions. Our community-based participatory approach has made path-breaking contributions to the public health problems of not just Gadchiroli, but also globally.
Mission
The mission of SEARCH is expressed in its name, Society for Education, Action and Research in Community Health.
We aim to Serve Locally, Impact Globally, by way of Service, Education, Original Research and Shaping Policy.
We work with marginalised communities – rural, tribal, women and children – to identify their health needs and develop community empowering models of healthcare to address those. The models, focusing to reduce deaths, diseases, poverty and suffering, are tested rigorously by way of research studies.
The knowledge obtained is further made available to others by way of training, publications, dissemination and advocacy for impacting global policies. Knowledge is a powerful lever of change!
Thus to realize our dream of Aarogya-Swaraj, we work on each step of this pyramid –
What We Believe In
“Research not from the ivory towers. Research not on the people. Research WITH the people.”- Abhay Bang, SEARCH
SEARCH believes that at the core of voluntary organisations lies altruism, service, vision of a better world, path finding and research. “Research” in our context means to identify the problems of people and to develop new and appropriate solutions by working with the people.
Disparity in research capacity will be worse than economic disparity because it is more fundamental. Therefore, for true democracy, it is necessary that people be a partner in research. This, we call, Research with the People.
Whatever research we do at SEARCH, has to provide benefit to local population. We have used what we learn to change society and have succeeded at the policy level too. This is the approach we employed
— Lao Tsu in Tao Te Ching
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