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Item A decade of conditional cash transfer programs for reproductive health in India: How did equality fare?(BMC Public Health, 2022) Deepali Godha; David R. HotchkissBackground Since 2005, India has implemented conditional cash transfer [CCT] programs to promote the uptake of institutional delivery services [ID]. The study aims to assess changes in wealth-based inequality in the use of ID and other maternal health care services during the first decade of Janani Suraksha Yojana and related CCT programs. Methods Data from two Demographic and Health Surveys were used to calculate changes in service inequality from 2005 to 2015-16 in the use of three or more antenatal care [ANC] visits, ID, and postnatal care [PNC]. The changes were assessed at the national level, within high and low performing states [HPS and LPS, respectively] and within urban and rural areas of each state category. Erreygers Index [EI] and Wagstaff Index [WI], superior to concentration index, were used to gain different insights into the nature of inequality. EI is an objective measure of inequality irrespective of prevalence while WI is a combined measure of inequality and the average distribution of an indicator that puts more weight on the poor. Results The results suggest that wealth-based inequalities decreased significantly at the national level. For ID, both indices showed a decline in both HPS and LPS though the change in WI in HPS was insignificant. For ANC, there was a significant decrease in inequality using both indices in HPS but not in LPS. For PNC, there was a significant decrease in inequality using both indices in HPS, and when using WI in LPS, but not when using EI in LPS. Conclusion Overall, the first decade of India's CCT programs saw an impressive reduction in EI for ID but less so for WI suggesting that the benefit of CCTs did not go disproportionately to the poor, which suggests that there is a need to reduce or eliminate the evident leakages. The improvement in uptake and inequality in ANC and PNC was not at par with ID, stressing the need to place greater focus on the continuum of care. The urban rural difference in HPS versus LPS in the changes in inequality reveals that infrastructure is important for CCTs to be more effective.Item A health risk model for rural households based on the distribution of multi pollutants(Water Sci. Technol., 2023) G. V. Rathnamala; G. P. Shivashankara; R. M. Ashwini; H. R. Rashmi; Basuraj BhowmikRapid consumerism and improper waste disposal create widespread environmental degradation through the air, water sources and landfills in India's rural areas. This work develops a health risk prediction model to score villages based on quantitative and qualitative factors. Quan-titative observations regarding pollutant levels and qualitative responses are collected at various households. The households are risk labelled against WHO standards. From the qualitative factors, significant factors are found. The health risk model is designed to correlate the qualitative factors. A total of 2,370 rural households spread across three dis tricts of Karnataka were selected. The study found that the health risk score predicted by the model has a higher significant correlation (>0.8) to various existing pollutant factors. The study found that source of drinking water (0.87), quality of drinking water (0.81), drainage canal availability (0.72), type of drainage (0.73), stagnant water (0.71), toilet availability (0.83), maintenance frequency (0.83), cooking fuel type (0.77), cigarette use (0.71), garbage pile up (0.73) and the percentage composition of wastes (0.74) were found to have a higher positive correlation to the health of rural households. The villages with higher health risks can be identified, and suitable mitigation plans can be designed to mitigate the health risk by state authorities.