A decade ago, Department of Health Promotions, RUSL introduced a novel approach to work with and by people to improve their own health, which is now known as ‘Community Based Health Promotion Approach’. In that, members of the general public are empowered to initiate and execute interventions in their own communities, allowing them to claim the ownership of the process. Department of Health Promotions facilitates the process and helps to improve capacities and skills of the communities.
Speaking at the inauguration of the PPIE collaboration, Vice Chancellor of the RUSL Dr. B. A. Karunaratne, stated that RUSL focuses on excelling in multidisciplinary research which would bring direct benefits to the Sri Lankan community and therefore, would like to explore the new frontiers promoting the quality of research including PPIE. Prof. Diyanath Samarasinghe, Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Sriyani Wickramasinghe , Dean, Faculty of Allied Sciences, RUSL, Prof. Athula Sumathipala , Keele University, Dr. Godwin Kodituwakkau, Chairman, IRD and academic staff of IRD and RUSL also attended the meeting.
Field Visit
The visitors from the IRD and Keele University were taken on a field visit to Madawachchiya, Anuradhapura. We were invited to a house in the village which also served as a base of operations for the community. The villagers who had conducted health promotion projects within Madawachchiya presented their projects.
