Recent Developments

In Jacaranda's most recent newsletter they annouce the launch of DELTA, an e-learning platform for healthcare providers across the country, share how they are working with Kakamega County to rethink maternal and newborn health service delivery and publish their quarterly Impact Report from Q4 2020.

Like many others in the health space, 2020 has been a year of learning and adapting. It has been no different for us at Jacaranda Health. Maternal health has been dramatically impacted by the pandemic, and this year has challenged us to act creatively to ensure that mothers and babies receive quality care when they need it. As this year comes to an end, we reflect on a few achievements our team is proud of and look ahead to the year to come:

• When COVID-19 reached Kenya, our goal was to accelerate the reach of our programs to as many women as possible to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on care-seeking and service delivery. Over the course of 2020, we have doubled our county partnerships, and are now deploying programs in 8 of Kenya’s most populous counties, where nearly 30% of the population lives
• We have reached over 350,00 mothers with our PROMPTS digital health platform, helping mothers to navigate facility restrictions and closures during the country-wide lockdown, and access care at critical moments during pregnancy and postpartum. We have developed new features over the platform, using AI to ‘triage’ women with potential danger signs to our clinical help desk, and creating digital referrals for cases sent from our help desk to healthcare facilities.
• We have also grown our network of in-facility nurse mentors, who support their peers building skills to manage obstetric and neonatal emergencies. We have built a network of 190 in-facility mentors who have mentored over 3,000 healthcare providers in 103 public hospitals. Our team adapted to virtual trainings and support meetings, and kept up morale as healthcare providers stood on the front lines of the pandemic. In order to keep facilitating provider skills development at scale, we are excited to be launching an e-learning platform for healthcare providers, who can access virtual learning modules over their phones.
• We are kicking off a country-wide impact evaluation funded by USAID and with partners at Harvard and IPA.

As we reflect on the challenges and successes of the year, we also look ahead into the coming year with excitement. We remain laser-focused on our target of reaching 1.5 million mothers and babies with our programs by the year 2022 and reaching national scale in Kenya as the standard of care in all public facilities. Our work is getting national recognition, as team members participated in developing the national Ministry of Health guideline for provider mentorship. We are also investigating a pilot in one new country in 2021.

Looking ahead to 2021, our team is excited by the challenges and opportunities that await us. We will keep working to expand and improve along the way, to ensure all mothers and babies get access to the quality care that they deserve.

Nick and Sathy, Executive Directors

If you would like to receive monthly updates from Jacaranda Health Click here 

Jacaranda are excited to share that they have recently received funding from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) fund to launch a large-scale impact evaluation of their programs. This is an important step for Jacaranda as they continue to build the evidence base for their core programs, and rigorously evaluate their impact on health outcomes. Jacaranda will be working with an independent evaluation team, and partnering with Margaret McConnell and Jessica Cohen from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.