Vanderbilt University Press For the Public Good: Women, Health, and Equity in Rural India: 1 (Policy to Practice)

For the Public Good: Women, Equity and Health in Rural India details the role of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), a groundbreaking, internationally recognized primary health care model that uses local solutions to solve intractable global health problems. Emphasizing equity and community participation, this grassroots approach recruits local women to be educated as village-based health workers. In turn, women village health workers collaborate to overcome the dominant double prejudices in local villages-caste and gender inequality. In one generation, village health workers have progressed from child brides and sequestered wives to knowledgeable health practitioners, valued teachers, and community leaders. Through collective efforts, CRHP has reduced infant and maternal mortality, eliminated some endemic health problems, and advanced economic well-being in villages with women's cooperative lending groups.For the Public Good describes how the recognition and elimination of embedded inequalities, in this case caste discrimination, gender subordination, and class injustice, promotes health and well-being and collaboratively establishes the public good. About the Author Patricia Antoniello is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Her recent ethnographic project in India researches community-based primary health care  and Village Health Workers at the Comprehensive Rural Health Project in a drought-prone region of India.  She is a medical anthropologist who previously conducted research on reproductive rights and women's health in Brooklyn.  She also participated on a multisite study of HIV/AIDS in the South Bronx. Professor Antoniello is the Director of the India: Global Health Study Abroad Program. Previously the she coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Program and the acting director of the Women's Center at Brooklyn College.