Synergy to Solve SDGs (S3): Targeting Physical and Mental Health in India

India has huge physical and mental-health crises. For examples, injuries and accidents are major causes of trauma-related morbidities, deaths, and related expenditures, and ~150 million individuals suffer mental morbidities. This project, the first collaborative connection between two prior IREF teams - UPenn SOM (CHOP) and SAS (Economics, Sociology), addresses these crises through collecting and analyzing data to test a transformative idea in a severely disadvantaged population by studying the economic and social impacts of a unique set of clinically proven physical-and mental-health interventions targeted to young married adults in low-income households/slums in New Delhi: (a) physical-health intervention, (b) mental-health intervention, and (c) integrated physical-and-mental-health intervention. The project will increase academic knowledge on these important topics, provide the foundation for concrete policy suggestions, enhance Penn interschool and interdisciplinary interactions, enhance Penn-Indian research and policy-related interactions, and lay the foundation for further interschool, interdisciplinary and Penn-Indian collaboration.