Sustainability of Services - Jacaranda Health

Setting a national standard of care

The Challenge

There is a growing landscape of maternal innovations across Africa, but few have been sustainably integrated within constrained health budgets. Meanwhile, there is not always a clear visibility on which interventions are high-value, and few accountability mechanisms to track whether funds reach the right place.

0 %

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

0 %

don’t receive a postpartum checkup

0 %

of emergency cases are referrals from other facilities

We are single-minded about

sustainability

We know that for interventions to have a deep and lasting impact in the public health system, they have to be embedded in government health agendas and budgets. Over the next five years, Jacaranda aims to fully transition its solutions to its local and national government partners, which requires them to be low-cost, easily managed, and proven to deliver impact against government health priorities. Our approach is to have governments gradually take on the running costs of our solutions, as a solid pathway to scale and sustainability.

We have achieved ‘cost share’ success in Kenya by:

Designing solutions that are affordable for integration into county budgets. The lifetime cost of a mum on PROMPTS is under $1 and MENTORS is 20% the cost of similar EmONC training programs in Kenya.

Achieving increasing economies of scale by increasing efficiencies in our technology and by partnering with local telecoms to reduce the cost of bulk SMS.

Demonstrating strong evidence of impact by using data from solutions to build an investment case and help governments better target their resources.

Seeking national-level endorsement by actively participating in government technical working groups and budgeting cycles.

“Jacaranda's solutions are in line with the county priorities, among them being capacity building of healthcare providers with the required skills to respond to obstetric emergencies hence improving the maternal and prenatal health outcomes.”

County Reproductive Health Coordinator, Nairobi County, Esther Kiambati

Snapshot of Impact

0 %

of MENTORS running costs are covered by county governments

0 %

of PROMPTS runnings costs are covered by county governments

Data for decision-making

Our government partners work with us to design what we measure to improve equity in decision-making and efficiency in health sector spending. In Kenya, we co-designed dashboards with facilities and county health management teams to give them usable and useful data on health system gaps, and offer routine training to build data literacy and adoption at different levels of government.

Our dashboards are designed as a complement to national data systems like KHIS2, offering real-time data direct from mothers to help governments spend limited resources with greater efficiency.

More Data

Improving respectful maternity
care through data

County Reproductive Health Coordinator Caroline Macharia helped Jacaranda co-design dashboards to give her better visibility into the gaps hindering timely maternal care in Murang’a County.