The founder, Dr. Geeta Sodhi, perceived that grassroots realities were not well addressed within policies & programmes. That shaped Swaasthya’s vision of bridging the gap between the micro and the macro.

Through a fellowship awarded to Dr. Geeta Sodhi, a small-scale innovative reproductive health model was developed with the hope of taking it to a larger scale. A lot of exploration was done to see if mechanisms existed that scaled up successful innovative work. Unfortunately, such mechanisms did not exist. The urge to make this happen prompted Swaasthya to embark upon intervention research to generate empirical evidence to advocate with policy makers & planners. Ever since, intervention research has been Swaasthya’s key strategy for advocacy.

Over the years, Swaasthya has also realised the importance of addressing socio-cultural contexts in dealing with health issues. For e.g., women’s & adolescent girls’ status in society often adversely affects their reproductive and sexual health. Presently, gender issues are addressed in all its programmes. Increased understanding of rights issues has also been providing a framework for conceptualising, designing and implementing programmes.