Quality of Care

Improving quality across the continuum of care

The Challenge

~50% of maternal deaths in Kenya are due to failure by providers to act appropriately during emergencies.

Nurses manage nearly all deliveries in Kenya’s public health system, yet many lack the lifesaving skills and knowledge to recognize or administer vital support for widely-preventable complications. Despite numerous efforts at classroom-based training programs in Kenya over the last ten years, frontline providers consistently score ~60% on emergency and obstetric skills. Knowledge gaps and disrespectful care continues to be a major driver of poor outcomes among mothers and infants.

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of women in Kenya do not achieve 4+ prenatal care visits

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don’t receive a postpartum checkup

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of emergency cases are referrals from other facilities

How we make an impact on

Jacaranda is aligned with the WHO Quality of Care Framework which sees quality through the dual lens of care provision and care experience. Our package of solutions is designed to improve both provision and experience by building the capacity of the frontline nurse workforce while amplifying women’s voices to drive accountability towards better services.

Quality of providers

Jacaranda’s MENTORS program supports respectful, best practice care by offering continuous training within the maternal care wards. Government nurse ‘champions’ are empowered to routinely mentor their peers in facilities with lifesaving emergency care skills, with demonstrated impact on knowledge retention, performance, respectful care and outcomes.

Quality of facilities

Jacaranda is working with select Kenyan counties and other implementing partners to determine broader quality standards in facilities, from the standard of hospital infrastructure, to the availability of commodities and equipment that support mothers during emergencies. Data is aggregated into real-time dashboards, helping governments monitor and support poor-performing facilities across a broad spectrum of quality metrics.

Perceptions of clinical quality

After every prenatal care visit, PROMPTS asks mothers whether the appropriate clinical steps were taken. This feedback helps health system managers track and standardize the clinical quality of prenatal care across the facilities they manage, including clinical, informational, and systemic gaps like medicine stock-outs or equipment shortages.

Perceptions of respectful care

After each pre/postnatal visit and after childbirth, women are asked whether or not they were treated with respect. Jacaranda routinely shares this feedback with healthcare facilities and their managers, to incentivize improvements in the type of care that mums receive.

Snapshot of Scale and Impact

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improved nurses’ skills in handling emergencies

Stories from the Field

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