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Exploring how primary health care systems support the path toward universal health coverage in India.

Primary Health Care is the foundation of a comprehensive, community-based approach to health systems - providing preventive, promotive, curative, and rehabilitative services close to communities through three key pillars: integrated services, empowered communities, multisectoral action.

Universal Health Coverage ensures everyone can access essential and quality health services without financial hardship through population coverage, service coverage and financial risk protection.

UN high-level meeting on Universal Health Coverage, 2019

“…primary health care… … as the foundation for achieving universal health coverage.”

  • Strengthening Primary Health Care (PHC) is widely recognized as the most effective pathway to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC), a core tenet of the Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Strong PHC systems make UHC possible by expanding access, promoting equity, and ensuring continuity of care across all levels.
  • Yet, important gaps remain in understanding how PHC contributes to UHC in practice, and how to measure that contribution.
  • PHC4UHC is an Indian research consortium examining the different pathways through which PHC approaches, as designed, and implemented in India, contribute to progress in UHC. It is funded by the WHO Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research for the period 2023–2025.

Team

The PHC4UHC India consortium brought together a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in health economics, anthropology, epidemiology, and social action, and with strong experience in applying mixed methods approaches to health systems research.

Arnab Mukherji

Arnab Mukherji

Professor
IIM Bangalore

Sapna Desai

Sapna Desai

Senior Fellow at the Population Council Institute

Prashanth N Srinivas

Prashanth N Srinivas

Director, Institute of Public Health (IPH) Bengaluru

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