THE ROLE OF MICROFINANCE-BASED SELF-HELP GROUPS IN THE CONTEXT OF HEALTH SERVICES IN INDIA

Commerce

Women's participation in microfinance-based self-help groups (SHGs) and the resultant social capital may provide a basis to address the gap in health attainment for poor women and their children. We investigated the effect of combining a health program designed to improve health behaviours and outcomes with a microfinance-based SHG program. When Compared to a matched comparison group, women in SHGs that received the health program had higher odds of delivering their babies in an institution , feeding colostrums to their newborn , and having a toilet at home . However, while the change was in the expected direction, there was no statistically significant reduction in diarrhea among children in the intervention community and the hypothesis that the health program would result in decreased out-pocket expenditures on treatment was not supported. Our study found evidence that health programs implemented with microfinance based SHGs is associated with improved health behaviours. With broad population coverage of SHGs and the social capital produced by their activities, microfinance-based SHGs may provide an avenue for addressing the health needs of poor women.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.