PLATFORM
The Lancet Citizens’ Commission: Reimagining Healthcare in India The Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System is an ambitious, cross-sectoral endeavor to lay out the roadmap to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) for the people of India. / Co-Chairs TARUN KHANNA VIKRAM PATEL KIRAN MAZUMDAR-SHAW GAGANDEEP KANG / Commissioners YAMINI AIYAR VIJAY CHANDRU MIRAI CHATTERJEE SAPNA DESAI ARMIDA FERNANDEZ ATUL GUPTA NACHIKET MOR ARNAB MUKHERJI POONAM MUTTREJA THELMA NARAYAN BHUSHAN PATWARDHAN SUJATHA RAO SRINATH REDDY SHARAD SHARMA DEVI SHETTY S.V. SUBRAMANIAN LEILA E. CALEB VARKEY SANDHYA VENKATESWARAN
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he Lancet Citizens’ Commission, which launched in December of 2020, aims to develop a roadmap to achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in India in the coming decade. The pandemic has had profound impacts on India’s people, and has highlighted structural weaknesses in the health system, including a disproportionately high disease burden, widespread risk factors, and deep inequities in access to care. The Commission’s work remains underpinned by a commitment to strengthening India’s public health system in all its dimensions, including promotive, preventive, and curative care.
The Commission and COVID-19 The devastating second wave of COVID-19 in India in the summer 2021 prompted the Commission to formulate and suggest urgent measures that the government needed to take. The Comment on COVID-19 Resurgence in India was published on May 25, 2021 in The Lancet. The Commission called for India’s central and state governments to
take eight urgent actions to “address one of the greatest humanitarian crises facing the country since its independence.”
Five Key Structural Areas The Commission’s work is structured across five workstreams: financing, governance, human resources, technology, and citizens’ engagement. Each of these workstreams includes a group of Commissioners and Fellows who have generated the key questions they plan to address through diverse research activities. The backbone of the Commission is a series of Theory of Change Workshops to map pathways for achieving UHC. The Commission has conducted five Theory of Change workshops as well as a full-day workshop that cut across workstreams in March of 2022. The workshop, held in collaboration with Catalyst Management Services at the Indian Institute of Science, brought together LCC commissioners, fellows and experts from diverse sectors of the Indian health system. The participants articulated the paradigm shifts and
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University
