Equipping missionaries for the mission: capacity building initiatives and the decentralised planning in Jharkhand, India

Introduction In 2006, even with the external support, most of the districts in Jharkhand state were unable to do health planning beyond an initial prospective planning. The key impediment was the lack of capacity to analyse the health situation in their districts and develop strategies and propose budgets to implement these. The Public Health Resource Network (PHRN) in partnership with the National Health Systems Resource Centre (NHSRC) developed a training curriculum and a fast-track capacity building programme in 2006 to address this gap. Jharkhand state adopted this training programme and trained selected officials from all districts in several batches beginning in the year 2008. Social workers from various civil society organisations were also trained on district health planning through a parallel distancelearning programme by PHRN. The trained personnel from both health department (n=155) and civil society groups (n=85) supported the district programme management unit in preparing district health action plan during November 2009 to March 2010. This study was done in order to assess the significance of the PHRN-led capacity building in enhancing the individual and institutional technical capacities at the district level. Study aimed to understand how the capacity building enhanced the district level planning and management of health service deliveries under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).