WHAT IS VADU HDSS?
The Vadu Health and Demographic Surveillance System (VaduHDSS) is a cornerstone of population health science in India. Initiated in 2002 by the Vadu Rural Health Program of KEM Hospital Research Centre (KEMHRC), Pune, it is a longitudinal cohort study that continuously tracks the health and demographic changes of a geographically defined rural population.
WHY HDSS MATTERS
Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems are among the most powerful tools in global health research. Unlike routine health information systems — which are often incomplete, inconsistent, or delayed — an HDSS provides reliable, prospective, longitudinal data on the same individuals and households over years and decades. This enables researchers to:
• Track changes in mortality, fertility, and migration with precision
• Study the natural history of diseases across the life-course
• Evaluate the impact of health interventions in real-world settings
• Generate verbal autopsy-based cause-of-death data where death registrations are incomplete
• Serve as a sampling frame for nested clinical and epidemiological studies
iSHARE — THE INDEPTH DATA REPOSITORY
Prof. Juvekar was the Founding Principal Investigator of iSHARE (the INDEPTH Shared Health and Ageing Research data Repository) from 2007 to 2013, and continues as Co-Investigator, Asia Node. iSHARE is the world's first open-access longitudinal health data repository from low- and middle-income countries, enabling researchers globally to access anonymized, documented datasets from HDSS sites across Africa and Asia.
The INDEPTH Network encompasses 52 HDSS field sites in sub-Saharan Africa (14 countries), South and Southeast Asia (India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia), and Oceania (Papua New Guinea). Through iSHARE, these populations — totaling millions of person-years of observation — become accessible for secondary analysis, comparative research, and meta-analyses.
THE INDIAN HDSS NETWORK (IHN)
Prof. Juvekar established the Indian Health and Demographic Surveillance System Network (IHN) — a national platform connecting approximately 20 HDSS sites across India, covering diverse geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic populations totaling around two million individuals. The network enables cross-site analyses and nationally representative evidence generation, particularly for populations and health challenges underrepresented in routine data.
TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS
Biannual household enumeration rounds using field-based tablet devices
Standardized verbal autopsy protocols for cause-of-death ascertainment
Linkage with clinical trial and vaccine study data
Real-time data quality monitoring and feedback loops
open-access data repository integration with INDEPTH-iSHARE