Centre for Training, Research and Innovation in Tribal Health (CTRITH)

Centres for public health research and training embedded within tribal health centers and hospitals are scarce.

Such an effort could help address important gaps in our knowledge (and action) on tribal health especially given the trend of increasing non-communicable diseases among tribal communities (including diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and COPD).

Tobacco and alcohol addictions are among the most crucial risk-factors driving mortality and morbidity among tribal populations, yet efforts to design community-based interventions adapted to tribal populations to address these are limited.

In the proposed Centre for Training, Research and Innovation in Tribal Health (CTRITH), a team of researchers from two public health research organizations and two medical colleges shall partner with a local non-governmental organization, community-based organizations and government health departments to (a) use state-of-the-art implementation research and theory-driven approaches to design, implement and evaluate innovative community health interventions for neglected health problems including hemoglobinopathies and substance (tobacco and alcohol) use among tribal populations (b) set up a birth cohort (including family members) among tribal populations in and around forested areas to characterize individual, household and population-level effects of tobacco and alcohol use, (c) create a field-practice area for physician-researcher and community medicine training in southern Karnataka