Strategy for Community Health 2014-2019: Transforming health: Accelerating the attainment of health goals

Abstract

Kenya Vision 2030 emphasizes preventive health care and health promotion to improve health care and reduce the burden of illness in the community. In 2006, the Ministry of Health developed and adopted the community health strategy as a core component of the Kenya Essential Package for Health (KEPH) as applied in the National Sector Strategic Plan 2005-2010. The overall goal of the community strategy is to enhance community access to health care in order to improve productivity and thus reduce poverty, hunger, and child and maternal deaths, as well as improve education performance across all stages of life. Since the implementation of the strategy, there have been observable changes in health indicators where the community health strategy has been rolled out, as evidenced by the “Evaluation Report of the Community Health Strategy Implementation in Kenya – 2010.” However, a situation analysis conducted in 2013 to inform the review of the 2006 strategy revealed a number of weaknesses, including weak coordination mechanisms between community health committees (CHCs) and health facility committees, lack of a mechanism for motivating and retaining community health volunteers, lack of clear monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and lack of community financing mechanisms, among others. The analysis recommended a number of measures to strengthen community health services, among them the development of this strategy