Healthcare Resources

The CBPAR-based Patient Rehabilitation Program provided by our telemedicine team aims to support patient recovery by integrating culturally familiar practices that resonate deeply with local communities. Guided by Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), the program employs locally accepted recovery approaches that help patients reintegrate into their communities and reconnect with their cultural heritage.

Our journey in providing cancer care began in 1994 with our telemedicine center, established to bridge healthcare gaps for the weaver community in Sualkuchi, Assam. With limited access to cancer care facilities in Northeast India, we adopted a unique approach that combines telemedicine with Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) to address these challenges. Through our telemedicine clinic, our research team gained significant insights into cancer pathogenesis, uncovering the barriers in cancer treatment from delayed diagnoses to limited awareness. Focusing on culturally responsive, community-driven solutions, we offered both preventive and long-term care, using CBPAR to identify specific health issues and tailor cancer care to the community’s occupational and lifestyle factors.

Our telemedicine clinic’s integration of Community-Based Participatory Action Research(CBPAR) and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) has led to groundbreaking insights intotuberculosis (TB) research, marking the culmination of three decades of dedicated study. Thisapproach, merging scientific inquiry with indigenous knowledge, enabled the discovery ofdormant TB bacteria within mesenchymal stem cells. This finding, revealing how TB bacteriaevade immune detection, is crucial for understanding the persistence and reactivation of TB.

There are fundamental lack of right methodologies to study the breast cancer disparity in rural India. Here, we have used an ethnographic-phenomenology approach to study the disparity in breast cancer care in Assam by using retrospective database of a rural cancer care non-profit clinic, the KaviKrishna Telemedicine Care (KTC), set up 1994 to develop a CBPR based cancer care (Abstract 3342, AACR 2019).