The Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health (CSMCH) is one of the eight Centres of the School of Social Sciences. These Centres were conceptualised by eight Special Committees that outlined the academic challenges that needed to be addressed by the Centres of JNU.The Special Committee of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, which visualised the objective and the scope of the Centre, recognised the critical need of both delineating a field of enquiry in the discipline and generating a data base for public health in India. It emphasised these needs and placed them high on the Centre?s agenda along with the task of training both social scientists and physicians of academically applying them selves to the huge tasks of public health in the country.

The recognition that the discipline of Preventive and Social Medicine needed to be strengthened was the major impetus for establishing the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health in the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The Centre was set up outside the confines of a medical college so that it could enrich itself through wider interaction with the various disciplines of natural and social sciences.

Over the past 25 years, the Centre has acquired the rich experience of evolving problem-oriented interdisciplinary academic programmes in addition to building an active research base. At the same time, efforts have also been made at constructing institutional links with policy making.

Under the overall objective of creating academic programmes for making health services meaningful to the people of the country, the CSMCH set out its objective to understand the health problems and health needs of the Indian people with a view to find workable solutions for them in the existing social structure and to examine the social structure itself to delineate the structural constraints which limit the scope of health interventions.

The task obviously requires an inter-disciplinary approach involving disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, history, politics, demography, statistics and public administration, apart from the disciplines that are traditionally included in public health. It was for this reason that the Centre was located in the School of Social Sciences.

Thrust Areas and Perspective plans

The Centre is poised to take up new challenges in the late nineties as public health has emerged as an important area of research at the national and international level. The following are the thrust areas of the Centre:

- Health service systems research;

- Epidemiology of diseases with special reference to communicable diseases, their resurgence and new epidemics;

- Quantitative epidemiology;

- Nutrition and health with a special focus on the vulnerable;

- Population policies;

- Environment and health including worker?s health;

- Medical sociology, medical anthropology and health economics;

- Political economy of health;

- Demographic history

The new areas that we need to initiate work in are:

Democratisation and decentralisation as alternative strategies for the delivery of health care;

Non-health service inputs into health;

Urban health;

Health legislation;

Bio-ethics;

Indigenous systems and primary health care;

International trade, legislation and health;

MCH Programme of Study

Physicians and nurses are offered admission to the Master of Community Health which is a pre-Ph. D. programme. The student is required to complete and acquire a cummulative grade A- (FGPA6.5) in the MCH programme before he/ she is admitted to the Ph. D. programme.

Eligibility for the Programme

For admission to the MCH programme, the minimum requirement is a good MBBS degree or M. Sc. in Nursing and one year experience in community health. The procedure for receiving applications, screening and selection of candidates are laid down by the University.

Duration of the Programme and Credit Distribution

The Master of Community Health Programme is spread over 18 months, spanning three academic semesters, including summer and winter vacations. While the students work for their course during the semester, the inter-semester vacations are utilised for field work. In this programme, a student has to earn a total of 36 credits. Of these, 9 credits are allocated to field-work and 27 credits are allocated to course work. There are two types of courses- core courses and optional courses.

The credit distribution is as follows:

Core Courses: 14 credits
Optional Courses: 13 credits

Assessment of Students and Grade System:

The Assessment of a student is based on the students term papers, and end-semester written examination and a viva-voce examination.

Course Outlines

The objective of the course structure of the MCH programme of studies is to expose the students to the core areas in the field of Community Health and then allow them to ventures out into specific areas in greater depth by selecting optional courses.

The course title, credit allocation and the broad content of the core courses and the optional courses are as follows:

M. Phil. In Social Sciences in Community Health

The education and Training programmes for social scientists have been evolved with the idea of making social scientists more effective members of a health team. The effort is to widen their social science perspective through the prescribed courses. Apart from strengthening the understanding of their basis disciplines, these courses underline the need for an integrated approach in the field of applied social sciences and offer the student an opportunity to understand the problems of community health. Students with a Master's degree in social sciences are eligible for admission to programme of study.

Eligibility for Admission

The procedure for receiving applications, screening and selection of candidates are being laid down by the University.

Duration of the Course and Credit Distribution

The course work shall be completed within the first two consecutive semesters and the whole M. Phil programme (including dissertation) within the first four consecutive semesters.
The course work and dissertation together carry total of 24 credits . Distribution of credits for various courses is as follows:

1. Core Courses: 12 credits

2. Optional Course: 6 credits

3. Dissertation: 6 cridits