Gunjan Taneja

I am right now working as the National Technical Lead in the USAID supported VRIDDHI (Scaling up RMNCH+A Interventions) Project where we provide techno-managerial support to the National Ministry and 6 states of the country where USAID is the State Lead Partner (SLP) in planning, implementation and monitoring of key RMNCH+A Interventions. My current job profile involves an integral component of leadership and entails overall backstopping to a team of more than 75 public health professionals working in various technical capacities, supporting the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India, 6 states of the country and 26 High Priority Districts (HPDs) to design, plan, monitor, implement and scale up RMNCH+A interventions. In addition working closely with the MoHFW, I am involved with formulation of policy guidelines and decisions which intend to have an overarching impact across the country. Since completing my Post Graduation in Community Medicine in 2010, I have worked with USAID supported projects (apart for a brief period from August to November 2011). For more than 5 years I worked in the state of Jharkhand which has been a priority state for Government of India due to poor socio demographic indicators. My district level experience gave me exposure to the operational aspects of health programs and role of health systems at implementation level while the state level work helped me understand the nuances of adopting and aligning national programs to state contextualities. Now at the National level, this experience is immensely helpful in designing robust and comprehensive implementation models with strong components of evidence based technical interventions and health systems strengthening. Very recently I have been instrumental in designing and implementing the Supportive Supervision mechanism for Reproductive Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCHA+) strategy in Jharkhand which was subsequently scaled up across 184 High Priority Districts (HPDs) of India impacting an annual cohort of impacting 8.3 million pregnant women and 7.6 million infants. In addition I have led the designing of the Care around Birth strategy: an integrated approach to improve Quality of Care for Maternal and Newborn Health during and around birth which is being implemented across 141 high case load government health facilities with an annual birth cohort of more than 200,000 across 26 High Priority Districts (HPDs) of the country. I have also been closely associated with the development of an implementation model for Community Based Advance Distribution of Misoprostol in the country.