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The Access Project

Accessible Health Services

The Access Project is an evidence generation and training programme that works towards advocating for young people’s right to quality health services without judgement, stigma and age related barriers. It aims to bridge the gap between young people and service providers by pushing for the inclusion of young people’s voice in service delivery, through creating resources and digital systems on youth-friendly health service provision; and engaging with health facilities, service providers and policy-makers.

The Access Project is an evidence generation and training programme that works towards advocating for young people’s right to quality health services without judgement, stigma and age related barriers. It aims to bridge the gap between young people and service providers by pushing for the inclusion of young people’s voice in service delivery, through creating resources and digital systems on youth-friendly health service provision; and engaging with health facilities, service providers and policy-makers.

What We Do

Building young people’s capacities: We build capacities of young people to conduct audits of health facilities on adolescent and youth-friendliness, create awareness amongst their peer groups on their right to SRH services and mobilise for demand generation to advocate with the stakeholders for improvement in quality of services;

Training service providers: We train community health workers and medical service providers in providing adolescent and youth-friendly health services;

Resource creation: We create resources, such as IEC material, FAQ sheets for community health workers and medical service providers. We also created a digital mobile application for young people to monitor the service provision in their health facility;

Advocacy: We advocate with service providers, government officials and policy-makers for improving quality of adolescent and youth-friendly health services.

  • Delhi
  • Varanasi, India

Peer Educators from TYPF’s CSE programme devised the idea of auditing health service providers and facilities in Delhi to be able to recommend any to participants of the programme.

2015

TYPF developed this into a systematic action research methodology, conducting youth-led audits of SRH services in Lucknow in partnership with Ye Ek Soch (YES) Foundation. This is profiled in the Seen, Not Heard report.

2016

TYPF took up youth-led health service audits in partnership with Asian Bridge India, Varanasi and Action India, North East Delhi. 30 youth auditors from Delhi and Varanasi audited 63 health facilities on youth friendliness and co-created comic strips and posters as well as the advocacy report with recommendations for multiple stakeholders.

2017-18

Through consistent engagement, the Additional Chief Medical Officer, Varanasi took cognisance of issues raised and provided a separate counseling room for ensuring privacy in the district hospital in Varanasi. TYPF also created training manuals and conducted training on youth friendliness with frontline health workers in MP in partnership with UNFPA.

2019

TYPF created an app to digitise data collection and analysis to scale up the use of youth led audits as a method to assess and advocate for youth friendliness in health service provision across locations to use in future.

2020
Audit Report and Study Design – The Access Project
Youth-led Audits For Strengthening Adolescent & Youth-friendly Health Services

The report provides key recommendations for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Service Providers and Health Facilities to strengthen service delivery for young people.

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Study Design and Methodology

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Seen Not Heard: Youth-Led Audit of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Lucknow
Full Report - English

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Executive Summary - Hindi

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IEC Posters on Youth-Friendly Health Services

A set of thirteen illustrated posters (in English and Hindi respectively) designed to cover thematics around Accessible Health Services. This portrayal aims to destigmatize instances of sexual health information that lack conversation because of their tabooed position in the society.

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Hindi
Accessible Healthcare Posters & Comic-Strips
Poster Presentation @ Women Deliver Conference

Increase in information levels and greater confidence and negotiation power amongst young people: 

“I have more information on female condoms, where to get it from. I can ask the pharmacist with more confidence even if I am not married”,

--- Nandini Verma, 23, Varanasi

The programme has led to an increase in the information and awareness levels of young people on their right to access sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. There is greater confidence and negotiation power in accessing SRH services and talking to the providers, without delay in service seeking and without fear or shame. Young people also feel more confident in supporting friends and peers in service seeking.  for example, was reported by a young auditor as a big change.

Recognition of young people’s voices and demands: 

The youth-led auditing in health facilities and advocacy with multiple stakeholders has led to a recognition of young people’s voices and demands in service seeking by stakeholders in the ecosystem such as, by the Adolescent Health Department, service providers, other CSOs etc.

Attitudinal shift amongst ASHA workers: 

In depth interactive training with ASHA workers has led to an increase in the practice of non-judgmental behaviour, maintaining privacy, and taking autonomous and informed consent of a young person in giving SRH services, irrespective of their gender and marital status. ASHA workers who participated stated that they would not inform a young person’s parents or in-laws about their sexual relationship/ history.

We are working towards uptake of our recommendations and demands by more and more health facilities and service providers so that young people have access to rights-affirming SRH services. We are also developing more resources for service providers to build their capacities on adhering to good practices in rights-affirmative service provision and resources for young people to create more awareness on their rights.

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