CARELS: Community-based Action Research for Eradication of leprosy Stigma

layman summary:<br>It is we known social stigma has been the major contributor to leprosy disease burden. Based on our earlier research which revealed knowledge is not adequate to change the peoples' attitudes and the available literature argues that no program can succeed unless community owns the responsibility, we hypothesised that assigning the responsibility of stigma reduction to community is ultimate stretegy. Inorder to test this hypothesis a action research was tken up with specific objectives to facilitte community towards formulating a plan of action which can be implemented by them and will be effective to solve the leprosy stigma problem in their specific village. TLM Research and Ethics Committee provided ethical clearance for the study.After rapport establishment with village leaders and other influential persons common village meetings were organized, explained of the purpose of the research and taken their consent. After formal FGDs and informal discussions among themselves they all came to a concussion that formation of a village committee named as 'Stigma Reduction Organizing Committee(SROC)' specifically for stigma reduction. SROC is responsible for design and implement community action essentially to take up the things forward by the community under the facilitation of the research project. Executive summary of the l project along with highlights of the activities designed and implemented by SROC in brief and the conclusions are resented thin this document