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Building an integrated model for health and welfare service delivery in India (Sewapuri block)

  • calendarJul 26, 2025
  • time 2 min

Despite the presence of numerous centrally sponsored schemes in health, nutrition, sanitation, education, and livelihood, rural blocks, such as Sewapuri in Uttar Pradesh, struggled with fragmented service delivery, low convergence among departments, and limited community outreach. These gaps led to inefficient resource utilization, poor awareness of entitlements, and limited access to quality services, undermining efforts to improve basic health and welfare outcomes in the region. Recognizing this, NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Rural Development identified the Sewapuri block for piloting a gram panchayat-level saturation model intended to demonstrate how coordinated governance and community-level convergence could address these challenges sustainably.

MSC was commissioned to support the Varanasi district administration in operationalizing the Sewapuri Vikas Abhiyan (SeVA). This involved:

  • Establishing a full-time program support unit (PSU) with development professionals to drive implementation and convergence.
  • Designing strategic sectoral plans for health, education, nutrition, sanitation, and financial inclusion with detailed action frameworks.
  • Developing a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) framework to regularly track and report on 138 defined KPIs.
  • Providing capacity-building and advisory support to government departments and ecosystem partners.
  • Facilitating community outreach and behavior change communication, including training 2,000 community volunteers.

MSC collaborated with NITI Aayog’s ecosystem partners, which include the Piramal Foundation, UNICEF, and the Gates Foundation’s partners, such as JHPIEGO, IHAT, PCI, ID Insight, and WaterAid. The integrated efforts led to:

  • Saturation of development interventions across all 87gram panchayats, reaching over 240,000 residents.
  • Achievement of 100% of targeted KPIs. A critical achievement was screening 95% of the eligible population (aged 30 and above) for diabetes and hypertension at health and wellness centers, with follow-ups at public health centers (PHCs).
  • Enhanced service delivery through better coordination across 13 central and state ministries.
  • A replicable model of convergence that contributed to the scale-up of the initiative under the Aspirational Blocks Programme across 500 blocks in India.

The project was commissioned by the Gates Foundation (formerly BMGF) in collaboration with NITI Aayog, with MSC serving as a technical and strategic partner to the Varanasi district administration.

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