Vecindarios forestales y acceso a la atención médica para las comunidades Adivasi en India: una síntesis interpretativa crítica

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Volume 2 Number 2, 2025, special issue, indigenous communities health and wellbeing
PDF (English)
Publicado: nov 5, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36368/jcsh.v2i2.1187
Palabras clave:
Bosque, vecindario, Adivasi, acceso, social, entorno, Indígenas

Contenido principal del artículo

Anika Juneja
Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India; Department Epidemiology and Global health, Umeå university, Sweden
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2687-9124
NS Prashanth
Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0968-0826
Surekha Garimella
The George Institute of Global Health, India
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2706-0268
Anna-Karin Hurtig
Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå university, Sweden
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7087-1467

Resumen

Introducción: Los entornos donde las personas viven y trabajan moldean los recursos y oportunidades disponibles para ellas, y estudiar el acceso a la atención médica en relación con estos entornos ayuda a comprender factores estructurales más allá de los individuales. Esto es especialmente relevante para muchas comunidades Adivasi, cuyas vidas están estrechamente ligadas al bosque.


Métodos: Utilizamos el método de síntesis interpretativa crítica, un enfoque flexible, crítico e iterativo para la síntesis de literatura. Conceptualizamos la salud y el acceso a la atención sanitaria en relación con el entorno vecinal, y empleamos este enfoque para analizar el acceso a la atención médica en comunidades Adivasi que habitan en zonas boscosas de la India.


Resultados: Desarrollamos una perspectiva del vecindario como entorno físico y social, y la utilizamos para construir un marco conceptual que describe los vecindarios forestales en la India. Los describimos en términos de su entorno construido y social. La disponibilidad de redes móviles, el estado de las carreteras, las inundaciones de arroyos durante la temporada de lluvias y los medios de transporte disponibles constituyen el entorno construido. Hay dos componentes clave del entorno social: el primero es la conexión del pueblo Adivasi con el bosque, y el segundo es el entorno institucional, compuesto por diversos actores que operan en el vecindario forestal. La vida del pueblo Adivasi está conectada con el bosque a través de su sustento, alimentación, bienestar físico y mental, y conocimiento ecológico adquirido de su experiencia vivida. El entorno institucional incluye actores que moldean tanto el entorno construido como el social: instituciones gubernamentales, proveedores privados con fines de lucro, organizaciones de la sociedad civil, curanderos tradicionales y el departamento forestal.


Conclusión: Al trabajar en temas de salud con los Adivasi, es fundamental considerar la conexión entre su vida y el bosque. Explorar los vecindarios forestales como entornos físicos y sociales permite examinar cómo se distribuyen los servicios públicos y cómo estos son moldeados por políticas externas y actores presentes en el vecindario. Esto podría cambiar el enfoque de las intervenciones en salud y atención sanitaria Adivasi, alejándolo de la actual orientación centrada en el individuo.

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1.
Juneja A, Prashanth N, Garimella S, Anna-Karin Hurtig. Vecindarios forestales y acceso a la atención médica para las comunidades Adivasi en India: una síntesis interpretativa crítica. J Community Syst Health [Internet]. 5 de noviembre de 2025 [citado 12 de noviembre de 2025];2(2). Disponible en: https://journals.ub.umu.se/index.php/jcsh/article/view/1187
Número
Vol. 2 Núm. 2 (2025): Indigenous communities, health and well-being
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Archivos de revisi´ón
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Biografía del autor/a

Anika Juneja, Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India; Department Epidemiology and Global health, Umeå university, Sweden

Anika Juneja is a medical doctor by training with a specialisation in public health and a work experience of 3 years of working in rural tribal India in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand in the area of maternal health, health system strengthening, and tuberculosis and undernutrition. Her areas of interest are social and structural determinants of health, qualitative research design, ecosystem health

NS Prashanth , Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India

Director & Health equity cluster lead

Prashanth is a medical doctor and public health researcher with experience in working in primary health care and community settings in southern Karnataka (India). He works at the intersections of healthcare and health systems with ecological and social systems with a particular focus on health inequities and social determinants of health. He leads a research group that focuses on transformative action on health inequities at the Institute of Public Health Bengaluru (India). His work critically examines the apparently transformative dimensions of technological solutions to health inequities vis-a-vis addressing fundamental issues of social inequality, exclusion and governance. He has been a champion of open knowledge and contributes actively to English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive and various other open knowledge and open data projects. Since 2014, he has been living and working at a long-term public health learning site at BR Hills Tiger Reserve in southern India. He has served as the Chair of Emerging Voices for Global Health (2015-2019) and serves as the Vice-Chair of the General Council of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp (Belgium). His research has been published in international peer-reviewed journals. Through a fellowship from the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance (2017-2022), he set up collaborations to examine health inequities in Adivasi (Indigenous) communities in multiple remote forested locations in southern, central and northeast India. Prashanth brings a policy and systems lens to health and healthcare problems of populations and is partial to social science research methods, particularly realist evaluation, implementation research and participatory action research approaches in addition to experience with quantitative epidemiological methods. He has been an early contributor and editor on the English Wikipedia with over 17,000 edits to various topics and articles. He also serves on editorial boards of Health Policy & Planning (Oxford University Press) & PLoS Global Public Health. He is a marathon runner and a birder with active contributions to eBird. He is also a licensed ham radio operator.

email: director@iphindia.org / prashanthns@iphindia.org

Surekha Garimella, The George Institute of Global Health, India

Senior Research Fellow

  • PhD,
  • MSc in Nutrition & Food science,
  • MPhil in Applied economics

Surekha Garimella is a Senior Research Fellow at the George Institute, working on the ARISE Hub – a project aimed at strengthening accountability mechanisms for improving equitable health and well-being for people living and working in informal urban spaces. Surekha holds a Bachelor's degree in Nutrition, a Master of Science in Nutrition & Food science, a Master of Philosophy in Applied economics, and a PhD in Public Health, Gender and Work.

Her research interests are in gender, women, work and political economy; Gendered health systems and accountability; feminist theory and practice and ethics of research practice. She has worked in implementation and research in gender, nutrition, health and wellbeing among women, children and adolescents in informal urban settlements in Delhi and Tamil Nadu as well as researched on the health and wellbeing experiences of women workers in urban informal settlements in Delhi.

Anna-Karin Hurtig, Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå university, Sweden

Head of the Dept. of Epidemiology and Global Health. Areas of interest: international health policy and systems research, community based health systems and primary health care, and migrant health.

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