International Journal of Social Science & Interdisciplinary Research__________________________________ ISSN 2277 3630 IJSSIR, Vol. 2 (4), APRIL (2013) Online available at indianresearchjournals.com 69 PERSPECTIVE ON ACCESSIBILITY OF PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES IN RURAL UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA NEELANJANA PANDEY RESEARCH SCHOLAR, INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR POPULATION SCIENCES, MUMBAI, INDIA ______________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Bridging the gap in utilization of public health facilities has always been a focus area of public health research especially in the post-National Rural Health Mission era, but do these programs and policies really reach to the grass root level population and whether the health care providers have agreement with policymakers is an important issue which needs a in-depth exploration. This study aims to examine the perception of community as well as health care providers regarding availability of public health facilities and barriers in accessing those in a rural setting of Uttar Pradesh. A small formative research has been designed to adhere providers‟ as well as community‟s perspective on public health facilities available in rural Uttar Pradesh. Qualitative exploration suggest that other than financial and physical accessibility, acceptability of maternal health services in community emerges as critical avenue for the utilization of both maternal and child health care services. Apart from provision of immunization and delivery care, few public health educators and regular supervisors need to be embedded in the public health care delivery system, which may directs the pathways of service delivery according to women and the local community needs. KEYWORDS: access, barriers, public health facilities, behavior. ______________________________________________________________________________ Background In our country, most of the health programmes emphasis on quantitative aspects of service delivery which means in quest of chasing high targets; most of them neglect the accessibility of facilities, quality of care and health care outcome in long run. But now program managers and providers increasingly recognize that these factors determine the success in attracting clients and society. Recent reforms of National Rural Health Mission (2005-12) are also aimed to increase accessibility and increase the utilization of public health facilities but still clients‟ perception regarding the facility determines whether to seek and continue to use a particular service. Thus this paper aims to understand the key perception of community regarding the public health care facilities available to them and providers‟ point of view on government health infrastructure and their barriers. A small formative study has been conducted in three randomly selected blocks of Lucknow district, Eleven In-depth Interviews (IDIs) have been done along with two Focus Group Discussions(FGDs) during May-June 2009. Content analyses of transcript of IDIs and FGDs have been done. FGDs were conducted with two groups of participants-Female staff at health facility (Nurse/Midwifes) and community based outreach workers, while the participants of other