Message from our Secretary

Dear All,
Greetings from Samarth !

Samarth has completed 16 years as on January 2023 leaving us feeling both blessed and grateful for having had the opportunity to continue to contribute our skills and expertise to several very important areas of research. Notable among these has been our continued work on validating and refining the care and support model for children with cleft lip and palate and another study that aims to develop and validate a mobile app for prevention of Early Childhood Caries in children less than 3 years of age. Both studies have young children as the focus of interest and given the long-term benefits that the findings of these studies will bring about, it is indeed gratifying for us to be a part of such important and useful work. Additionally, we continue to follow our passion and interest in mental health and in this context, our work with SCARF focusing primarily on adolescent mental and behavioural health has also been very rewarding. Whether it be understanding the complexities of intergenerational conflict or appreciating the use of art- based therapies like theatre, painting, story-telling etc. as ways and means of improving mental health, these new and innovative methods are turning out to be effective in helping young people cope more effectively with their life situations.

What has also been particularly satisfying for us has been the demand for our qualitative research methodology workshops which we have been conducting since the inception of Samarth. Over the years we have refined and expanded the scope of these workshops so as to make them both interesting and relevant to participants. We have developed a foundation course on qualitative research methods which primarily addresses the principles, characteristics and methods of qualitative research. This course caters to beginners and provides them with a good understanding of qualitative research. A separate course on analytical approaches, focusing primarily on the thematic analytical approach is also conducted for those who wish to advance their knowledge and practice of qualitative research. These courses are conducted online. We also run face to face physical sessions which are usually based on requests from academic and medical institutions. Through the conduct of these workshops, we believe that we have been able to reach a wide cross section of young and mid-career researchers, scientists and medical professionals, many of whom have been able to use the training so imparted to design and execute qualitative research in their own settings. For a teacher, nothing can be more gratifying than this! We are currently working on designing courses specifically targeting other qualitative analytical approaches such as Grounded Theory approach and Rapid Qualitative Research approaches.

We remain deeply grateful to all our collaborators, members and well-wishers and look forward to their continued support and encouragement in all our future endeavours.