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

• Apr 2, 2026
• 2 min

In Uttar Pradesh, health and welfare programs often operated in silos, which limited comprehensive service delivery to communities. The central government sponsors multiple schemes in health, nutrition, sanitation, education, and livelihoods. However, rural blocks, such as Sewapuri, faced fragmented implementation, low convergence among departments, and limited coordination among development agencies. These gaps resulted in inefficient resource use, poor awareness of entitlements, and missed opportunities to serve vulnerable populations effectively. 

The NITI Aayog, the Government of India’s think tank, identified the Sewapuri block in Uttar Pradesh to address these challenges. The organization sought to pilot a replicable administrative model at the local government level for the integrated delivery of health and welfare services. The initiative intended to show how coordinated governance and community-level convergence could sustainably improve outcomes and inform national scale-up. 

MSC helped the Varanasi district administration operationalize the Sewapuri Vikas Abhiyan (SeVA). Our team supported the district administration to: 

• Establish a full-time program support unit (PSU) to drive implementation and convergence; 

• Design strategic sectoral plans for health, nutrition, education, sanitation, and financial inclusion, supported by detailed action frameworks; 

• Facilitate convergence among development agencies operating in the block. These agencies include the Piramal Foundation, UNICEF, Jhpiego, IHAT, PCI, IDinsight, and WaterAid; 

• Develop field-level optimization solutions and a monitoring, evaluation, and learning framework to track progress across defined health and nutrition indicators, which include immunization, antenatal care, and nutrition services for children and pregnant women; 

• Provide advisory and coordination support aligned with the public healthcare delivery system. 

The integrated efforts led to: 

• Saturation of interventions across all 87 gram panchayats that reached more than 234,000 residents; 

• Strengthened service delivery across the primary healthcare spectrum, which includes communicable and noncommunicable diseases, reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health, and childhood and maternal anemia; 

• Screening of 95% of the eligible population aged 30 years and above for diabetes and hypertension through health and wellness centers, with referrals to public health centers in line with National Health Mission protocols; 

• Convergence across 13 central and state ministries, which delivered measurable improvements in health and nutrition outcomes without significant additional funding; 

• Development of a replicable convergence model that informed national scale-up through the Aspirational Blocks Programme across 500 blocks (district subdivisions) in India. 

The NITI Aayog and the Government of Uttar Pradesh commissioned this project with support from the Gates Foundation, Jhpiego, and WaterAid. MSC served as a technical and strategic partner to the Varanasi district administration.