Kenya
We work with the national Government of Kenya, county governments, and local organizations to strengthen health immunization service delivery for Kenyans.
MOMENTUM is working with the Government of Kenya and its public health workers to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates in Homa Bay, Kakamega, Nairobi, Trans-Nzoia, and Vihiga counties. We also work in Homa Bay and Vihiga counties to strengthen routine immunization platforms so that Kenyans can receive the COVID-19 vaccine. We collaborate with the Government of Kenya and local partners to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on strengthening local organizations’ and governments’ capacity and commitment to improving the health of all Kenyans.
Helping Kenya Plan for and Manage COVID-19 Vaccination
MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity partners with the Kenyan Ministry of Health at the national level to prepare for, implement, and evaluate the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programs in Kenya to ensure effective management of vaccine service delivery. This effort has included helping allocate Kenya’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines and monitoring and assisting vaccine distribution mechanisms. We also work with the Ministry of Health to track and monitor COVID-19 vaccine stock levels to make decisions about distribution.
We connect our partnership with Kenya’s Ministry of Health to county-level distribution of vaccines in Kakamega, Nairobi, and Trans-Nzoia counties. We partner with county leaders in planning and coordinating technical working group meetings and provide technical assistance—including operational guidance for county COVID-19 vaccine task forces—to help them reach priority populations with the COVID-19 vaccine. In Kakamega and Trans-Nzoia, we organize vaccination sessions at the community level to increase access to and uptake of COVID-19 vaccination. We also provide technical guidance to conduct performance review meetings to improve the completeness of data reporting and data for decision-making.
Partnering to Reach More Young People With Health Care
Kenya has a young population–38 percent of Kenyans are under age 15.1 MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is partnering with Youth for Sustainable Development (Machakos Chapter), a Kenyan youth-led organization, to help them develop gender-transformative and age-specific health interventions that reach young people. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership also collaborates with a USAID-funded food security project, Nawiri, in Samburu and Turkana counties to help meet the health needs of adolescents and youth of all genders. We help Nawiri integrate adolescent health into their health programs and work with the Kenyan Ministry of Health to assess adolescent health care in county-level systems.
Recently, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership also partnered with the National Council for Population and Development, a semi-autonomous government agency, to lead advocacy and provide multisectoral coordination to raise awareness of adolescent sexual and reproductive health needs; increase budget awareness and allocation for contraceptive commodities; and harness the implementation of population, environment, and development interventions across various sectors to ensure a more significant impact on the health and wellbeing of Kenyan youth.
Learn how we harness the power of youth voices to make health systems more responsive to the needs of young people.
Strengthening Routine Immunization Services
Although the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimate that almost 89 percent of Kenyan children are fully vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, many children throughout Kenya still miss out on basic life-saving immunizations against vaccine-preventable diseases.2 MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity works with the Ministry of Health and local stakeholders in Homa Bay and Vihiga counties to strengthen routine immunization platforms so that Kenyans receive the lifesaving vaccines they need. We help strengthen planning so that immunization services reach every community, strengthening the supply of vaccines and engaging communities to get vaccinated, using data for decision-making, supportive supervision, facility-based mentorship, and capacity strengthening.
MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity also works with the Kenyan Ministry of Health to implement the Reaching Every District/Reaching Every Child approach. Designed by the WHO, the approach builds the capacity of local health systems to address common obstacles to routine immunization and reach more children with vaccinations. We partner with country-level stakeholders to identify and map counties with under-immunized and zero-dose children. We also help the Ministry of Health implement Periodic Intensification of Routine Immunization and train health workers to better reach under-vaccinated populations.
Learn how we reach zero-dose children with lifesaving vaccines.
Strengthening Respectful and Person-Centered Care for Mothers and Babies
Maternal mortality in Kenya remains high: 5,000 Kenyan mothers die of pregnancy-related causes each year.3 MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is working with the Kenyan Government and other stakeholders to help them implement strategies and tools to end preventable maternal mortality and track maternal deaths.
We are also collaborating with the WHO, UNICEF, and the Kenyan Ministry of Health to improve mothers’ and children’s quality of care.3 MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership works with the Ministry of Health through the Department of Family Health and Department of Quality and Standards to adapt and adopt WHO-recommended quality of care standards for small and sick newborns and pediatrics, including nutrition standards. Once adopted, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership will provide technical and financial assistance to the Ministry of Health to implement these standards in service delivery settings within the primary healthcare system.
We are also working with the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders to conduct a landscape analysis of respectful maternity care implementation, using evidence from qualitative research to identify drivers of disrespect and abuse and co-designing targeted interventions. Learning from this process will inform a review of the national package for training for health workers and advocacy to policymakers.
Increasing Access to Voluntary Family Planning
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership works with Jacaranda Health, a Kenyan non-governmental organization, to better tailor their text-messaging platform to provide mothers with information about postpartum family planning. In addition to this work, MOMENTUM is working with the Government of Kenya to increase demand for and access to the hormonal intrauterine device (IUD) as part of the broader mix of long-acting reversible contraceptives.
MOMENTUM is also working with the Midwifery Association of Kenya to build their technical and organizational capacity to build health care workers’ capacity to offer additional contraceptive methods in the public sector. This partnership trains family planning providers in the public sector on the hormonal IUD, adding it to the wider mix of contraceptive methods available in public health facilities.
Check out our research on expanding hormonal IUD access in Kenya and Zambia.
Strengthening the Capacity of Health Systems and Health Workers
Kenya began training its health workforce on COVID-19 vaccination in March 2021. Ongoing training is needed to decrease vaccine hesitancy among health workers and provide them with the information and skills to safely manage the COVID-19 vaccine and administer it to their clients. MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity works in Kakamega, Nairobi, and Trans-Nzoia counties to provide health care workers with frequently updated information about COVID-19 vaccines, strengthening their ability to collect, report, manage, and use data to make decisions in real-time. We also partner with USAID’s Kenya Health Partnerships for Quality Services (KHPQS) project to strengthen their capacity to deliver COVID-19 vaccines by providing training on immunization technical topics, assisting the project on their trainings on COVID-19 vaccine administration for health care workers, supporting their vaccine outreach activities, and facilitating learning between organizations that are part of the KHPQS.
In Homa Bay and Vihiga counties, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is working with the Kenyan Ministry of Health to strengthen the capacity of health systems to improve data use and scale up best practices for the health of mothers and children. We provide technical assistance to the County Health Management Teams to plan, budget, and implement high-impact health interventions for mothers and children. We are also helping them to establish robust supply chains for essential commodities, county-led and -owned quality improvement systems and teams, and training systems for continuous health worker capacity building. At the community level, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is collaborating with the Ministry of Health to roll out the community scorecard, a social accountability approach aimed at empowering communities to effectively engage with the health system and ensure sustainable social accountability of the health system.
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: Jhpiego, Save the Children, PACT, Kenya Ministry of Health Department of Family Health and Department of Quality, Standards, and Regulations, Jacaranda Health, Youth for Sustainable Development (Machakos Chapter), Midwifery Association of Kenya, National Council for Population and Development
MOMENTUM Routine Immunization Transformation and Equity: JSI Research and Training Institute, Inc., PATH, Kenya Ministry of Health, Expanded Programme on Immunization, Kenya Red Cross
Interested in partnering with us or learning more about our work in Kenya? Contact us here or check out our regional reference brief.
Learn more about USAID’s programs in Kenya.
References
- Kaneda, Toshiko, Charlotte Greenbaum, and Carl Haub. 2021 World Population Data Sheet. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau. 2021. https://interactives.prb.org/2021-wpds/.
- World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Kenya: WHO and UNICEF Estimates of Immunization Coverage. July 6, 2021. https://data.unicef.org/app/uploads/2022/07/ken.pdf
- WHO, UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund, World Bank Group, and the United Nations Population Division. “Maternal mortality: levels and trends 2000 to 2017.” Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2019. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241516488
Last updated September 2022.