Aardram mission has succeeded in making a positive impact in the health sector even within a short time. However these activities that are still limited to the department of health and Local Self Government have to be switched into a large scale community led movement. The Mission has to be nurtured into a campaign, led by the people belonging to different sections, through which we can find permanent solutions to the key challenges the health sector of Kerala is facing right now.

The state of Kerala, while maintaining the lead position in terms of health indices and interventions in health sector, is facing high prevalence rate of life style diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, chronic pulmonary diseases, and cancers which can lead to high rates of premature mortality and morbidity. Prevention and control of these disorders cannot be attained simply by continuing routine activities such as screening and treatment but interventions to bring in major transformation in the life style, family life, social life and different social determinants of health are essential. A culture and system has to be developed to improve the preventive and promotive activities, simultaneously strengthening the screening and follow up activities. A people led campaign is essential to permanently control outbreaks of communicable diseases in some parts of the state, to address the issues related to the decrease in immunization rates and to address specific issues in coastal and tribal areas..

   Improving community participation is one of the strategies to address the challenges faced by the health system in Kerala right now. This has been stated in the State health policy, 13th five-year plan guidelines and in the action plan developed for the state based on the SDG goals declared by the UN. Addressing these challenges faced by the health system a State level launch on “People led campaign” with a focus on lifestyle diseases was done on 18th November 2019 at Trivandrum. The focus of the campaign is ‘Our health, our responsibility”.

There are three wings for carrying out the campaign

• Implementation wing
• Campaign wing
• Facilitatory wing

Implementation wing

Campaign wing

   People involved in this group are trained to coordinate and organize mass movements, screenings, events and gatherings. The role of the campaign team is to orient, motivate and mobilize the public for utilizing the services and to involve in the implementation process. They will assist the implementation team to carry out interventions at the grass root level with people’s participation.

Facilitatory wing

   Faculty/residents/students in Community Medicine department of Government and Private Medical Colleges and Nursing Colleges and Retired professionals with appropriate technical knowledge are included in this wing.

They act as a team to facilitate the process at all levels with specific roles in facilitating implementation activities, monitoring and evaluation of the process at different levels, trouble shooting at different point of time and handholding the implementation wing as well as the campaign wing at times of crisis.

The campaign will be run as a continuous ongoing effort with the vision to have healthy Kerala addressing:

• Healthy food habits
• Promotion of exercise & activities
• Mental health and de-addictions
• Cleanliness and waste disposal
• The preventive & promotive health care by improving the health seeking behavior