Closing the Gap: How Urban Primary Health Care Can Achieve Health Equity

Written by: Marhouba Khan Asfi (Research Assistant) Bangladesh is urbanizing rapidly. More people are living in cities every year, and that growth increases demand for services of every kind, including health care. City corporations and municipalities are expected to deliver public services in urban areas, but they face real limits in staffing, funding, space, coordination, and
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Listening Between Appointments, Streets, and Silence

Written by: Nabila Binth Jahan (Junior Research Associate) Fieldwork rarely begins with a recorder switched on. More often, it begins with waiting, outside clinics, in narrow lanes, beside busy roads, or under the sun, hoping someone will spare a few minutes to talk. In the urban slum areas of Dhaka where CHORUS Projects 1 and 2
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When Public Spaces Aren’t Truly Public: Making Physical Activity Safer for Women and Girls in Urban Bangladesh

Written by: Umme Salma Anee (Senior Research Assistant) A park can be five minutes away and still feel unreachable. For many women and adolescent girls in urban Bangladesh, the barrier is not a lack of interest in being active. It is what surrounds the activity itself: the walk to the space, the fear of harassment, the
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Addressing the Knowledge Deficit: Health Education and Public Awareness in Bangladesh

Written by: Kazi Fatin Sami (Research Assistant) Whenever someone goes through a difficult moment in life, a familiar regret tends to appear: “I wish someone had warned me earlier,” or “If only I had known about this risk in advance.” The same pattern holds true for health. For many diseases and health-related conditions, warning signs are
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Behind the Numbers: Verifying Immunization Coverage in the Rohingya Camps

Written by: Ibrahim Hasan (Research Assistant) Some vaccination cards were crisp and complete, the kind you can read in seconds. Others arrived as blurred photos taken in low light, with smudged ink and handwritten dates that could be read two different ways. I spent a lot of time zooming in until the text almost broke apart,
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Field Reality: What We Learned While Assessing Smoke-Free Public Places

Written by: Lenik Chakma (Research Assistant) In some restaurants, the “No Smoking” sign was there, neatly placed on a wall. The smell told a different story. In transport hubs, the rules were visible on paper, but the pace and crowd made enforcement feel like an afterthought. That gap, between what the law says and what people
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The Hidden Tax on Health: Why Diabetes is Bankrupting Bangladesh’s Families

Written by: Sirat-E-Rowshan Islam (Research Uptake and Communication Officer) Mira Bala (pseudonym), a 45-year-old mother of three, living in a small village in a district town with limited healthcare facilities, makes a calculation every morning how many blood sugar test strips she can afford this week. If she buys the full insulin prescription, her eldest daughter’s
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Universal Health Coverage needs more than a bigger budget. It needs institutions and skills

As the nation is heading towards its 13th national election, the long queue of people’s demands is lining up behind all the competitive political parties. Health sector experts are also sharing their demands across various platforms, and one common question that has repeatedly been raised and debated is what strategy the newly elected government will
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ThinkSpace: Quarterly Research Digest

ARK Foundation is pleased to launch ThinkSpace, a quarterly magazine developed to showcase evidence, reflections, and learning from ongoing research and field engagement. This edition features stories from researchers, implementation insights, and policy-relevant themes. 📖 Read here: ThinkSpace  or HTML version
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CHORUS Annual Partners’ Meeting

The CHORUS Partners’ Meeting officially commenced on 26 January 2026 (Monday) in Accra, Ghana, bringing together partners from Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria, and Nepal. The meeting provides a valuable platform for reflection, cross-country learning, and collaboration to strengthen community-led urban health systems. ARK Foundation is participating in the meeting as part of the CHORUS Urban Health
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