From humble beginnings to international recognition, IHMP has had many milestones.
In 1976, a young medical graduate started work in a 5-bed hospital at Pachod, a village in Aurangabad district of the state of Maharashtra, which had experienced the worst famine of the century.
Two years later, a team consisting of two doctors, a nutritionist and a demographer was established. They initiated a comprehensive Health and Development Project across 52 villages with a total population of about 60,000.
IHMP pioneered the training of traditional birth attendants known as ‘Dais’ and was the first organization in the country to implement a programme on maternal and neonatal health through them. The programme got scaled up at the National level.
With the aim of providing public health services to deprived sections of the society, IHMP has worked on maternal and neonatal health, malnutrition, sanitation, communicable and non-communicable diseases, life skills education for adolescent girls, reproductive and child health services and gender sensitization among young men and boys both, in villages and in urban slums.
In 1986, IHMP started a training centre to provide hands-on skills in public health. By 1990, it had established itself as an internationally and nationally recognized public health training centre. Over 10,000 non-profit and Government health functionaries from India, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and African countries have received training at IHMP.
IHMP expanded its services to the city of Pune in 1996, where it has created public health models for urban slums. In 2005, IHMP was invited by the Government of India to serve on the task force that was established for formulating the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) policy. In 2020, IHMP established a state of the art clinical pathology laboratory and mobile medical unit to provide high quality diagnostic, curative and referral services to the poor living in urban slums.
In 1998, IHMP was commissioned by the World Bank to conduct a social assessment for the information, education and communication component of the National programme on Reproductive and Child Health. The assessment report was used by the Government of India for formulating the first National policy on Information, Education and Communication.
In 1998, IHMP identified the need to work more closely with adolescent girls, in order to achieve its objective of reducing maternal morbidity and mortality. The life-skills program for adolescent girls was conceptualized and initiated during this year with the aim of delaying age at marriage.
In 2003, acknowledging that social norms take years to change, and that girls will continue to get married at a young age, IHMP conceptualized and initiated work with married adolescent girls and their spouses, through a health-based programme.
In 2013, IHMP decided to adopt an integrated approach, combining the interventions of life skills education for unmarried adolescent girls, sexual and reproductive health interventions for married adolescent girls, and gender sensitization for boys and young men. IHMP has been able to pilot the integrated model.
The model is being scaled up in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra in several locations.