Monica is a development professional and policy researcher working on community and health-systems based programmes for women’s and girl’s health, nutrition and empowerment outcomes. She has over six years of experience in evidence generation, program management and implementation around women’s groups in India. She has worked with government, donor agencies and non-profit organizations on health, nutrition and gender community-led participatory interventions, public health systems, social inclusion, local governance and migration, from grassroots to national-level across the various Indian States, with tribal, rural and urban communities. She has experience in working on large-scale multi-sector impact evaluation on nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-intensive interventions for women and girls, handling multi-state partnerships and providing technical assistance to government systems at national, state and district levels. She has designed and tested gender transformative interventions, liaised with government stakeholders for upscaling of evidence-based interventions and developed and strengthened monitoring and evaluation systems for programmes. She is skilled in designing and conducting process evaluations, formative research, qualitative and quantitative research. She has research publications on women’s groups, health, nutrition, mental health and gender.
Prior to joining PC Consulting, she worked as Consultant with the Population Council Institute in a UNICEF-ROSA supported study toward documenting the pathways and potential of using women’s groups and movements for advancing women and girls nutrition in South Asia. Prior to that, she worked as a Senior Consultant with ROSHNI-Centre of Women Collectives led Social Action, Lady Irwin College, New Delhi, a TSU to DAY-NRLM, Ministry of Rural Development, supported by UNICEF India. She has also worked with The India Nutrition Initiative, Tata Trusts to effectively roll out POSHAN Abhiyaan under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India and Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana, an NGO working on Self-help Groups’ initiatives in Uttar Pradesh, India. She holds a Masters’ Degree in Development Policy, Planning & Practice from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India (Tuljapur Campus) and was also awarded the Institute’s Gold Medal. Her Masters’ dissertation examined the role of Delhi’s construction workers’ welfare board and trade unions in achieving social security. Her interest areas include women’s groups, public health systems, nutrition, gender, SRHR, women and adolescent girls’ empowerment and financing.
Publications:
Shrivastav M., Vasudeva S., Gulati T., Sahu B., Saraswat A., Abraham N.R., et al. (2022) The mental health of adolescent girls from a tribal region of Central Rural India during the COVID-19 pandemic – A cross-sectional study to determine the role of gender disadvantage. J Neurosci Rural Pract;13:669-75. DOI: 10.25259/JNRP-2022-2-3
Raghavan, A., Satyanarayana, V.A., Fisher, J., Ganjekar, S., Shrivastav, M., Anand, S., Sethi, V., Chandra, P.S. (2022) Gender Transformative Interventions for Perinatal Mental Health in Low and Middle Income Countries—A Scoping Review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, 19, 12357. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912357
Shrivastav, M., Saraswat, A., Abraham, N., Reshmi, R. S., Anand, S., Purty, A., Xaxa, R. S., Minj, J., Mohapatra, B., & Sethi, V. (2021). Early lessons from Swabhimaan, a multi-sector integrated health and nutrition programme for women and girls in India (Field Exchange 65). ENN Online. https://www.ennonline.net/fex/65/healthnutritionprogrammewomenindia