LearnTB: Disseminating Appropriate TB Education in India

Over five million people suffer from tuberculosis (TB) in India and one thousand people die each day. TB medication is available to help save these people, but delivering the medication and monitoring a patient’s compliance to the drugs still remains a huge challenge. Moreover, TB eradication involves more than treating those known to be affected. To prevent the transmission of TB, we need to raise awareness of the disease and how it can be contracted and cured. LearnTB addresses these specific challenges in a sustainable and effective manner.

Specifically, we focus on public health education by targeting the primary school-aged community. These are members of society who are most likely to benefit from this knowledge and have access to an educational setting. We have developed an understandable, fun, and activity based 3-week curriculum to educate the school-going population of underserved communities about the TB disease, contraction, prevention, and treatment. Currently, our team has outstanding teaching experience and is capable of teaching in three languages: English, Hindi, and Bengali. LearnTB’s partner organization in our TB education campaign is ASHA for Education, a group that sets up schools and additional informal learning centers in underserved communities in India. Currently, ASHA has over 700 educational projects which reach out to thousands of people and have widespread impact. We are working directly with the ASHA branch in the town of Natpurwa as well as the ASHA chapter in Boston to tailor our curriculum to the background and needs of the community with whom we intend to work and disseminate our curriculum to our target demographic.

Final Proposal (PDF)

Final Presentation (PDF)