UCL GBSH leads £1m international project to reimagine Indigenous health systems in India

A new £1 million research project led by the UCL Global Business School for Health (GBSH) will work alongside Indigenous communities in southern India to develop culturally responsive health systems.

Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the three-year project, Reimagining Health Systems with Indigenous Communities in India (rTribe), will co-produce a practice model of health system responsiveness with Adivasi (Indigenous) communities in the states of Karnataka and Kerala.

The research is co-led by UCL GBSH's Professor Kabir Sheikh and Dr Prashanth N Srinivas, Director of the Institute of Public Health Bengaluru, in collaboration with the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and the University of Melbourne.

Using Indigenous Standpoint Theory and participatory action research, the team will collaborate with community organisations and local health systems to design models that embed cultural safety and responsiveness into healthcare delivery.

“I’m looking forward to advancing this work with our partners in India and Australia,” said Professor Sheikh. “It’s an opportunity to reimagine how health systems can learn from and better serve Indigenous communities, and we hope it will catalyse new thinking and action toward more equitable and culturally grounded health systems.”

The project aims to transform health service delivery for Adivasi communities and produce scalable models and training resources for culturally competent care in other low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts.

Dr Shakeela V, Director of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, said:

“We believe this project holds significant promise in advancing the field of health research and promoting sustainable health improvement, particularly for Adivasi communities in southern India.”

By addressing the persistent exclusion of Indigenous peoples from responsive and respectful health systems, rTribe offers an evidence-based model for decolonising global health systems. The work aligns with UCL GBSH’s Health Systems and Policy research cluster, which focuses on inclusive and context-sensitive system design to improve health outcomes worldwide.