Category: 2024 Summer Blogs

Transitions

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

Kisii, Kenya

The hums of motorbikes and brays of grazing cows pervade the bustling community of Kisii, a town of over 100,000 nestled in the hilly highlands of western Kenya. For the next six weeks, I will be working as a project intern with the Kisii Konya Oroiboro Project (KIKOP)—a community led organization that aims to address maternal and child mortality through facilitating peer-to-peer Care Groups of mothers, home visits to monitor the wellbeing of mothers and their children, youth education programming, and strengthening of the existing healthcare system to support maternal, child, and reproductive health. As I transition to life seven hours ahead of North Carolina, I’ve noticed that KIKOP has been going through a few transitions of its own.

Outside of the KIKOP office. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a primary partner of KIKOP.

Last year, KIKOP shifted from manual data collection to the use of a new digital data system called Meaningful. Using the Meaningful app on their tablets, Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) collect information during home visits with women who are pregnant or have recently given birth in the Kisii County catchments of Matongo, Iranda, and Nyagoto. At these home visits, CHVs are responsible for checking in with the wellbeing and health education of mothers to promote maternal and infant health. One of my primary tasks this summer will be to support the KIKOP team in the shift to using Meaningful by hearing the perspectives of CHVs who are using the new system and compiling the data they collect to create a visualization dashboard for maternal and child health indicators.

Ground-floor game area within the KIKOP office.
Third-floor classroom within the KIKOP office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few days before I arrived, another major change for KIKOP came when the team relocated from a one-room building within the Kisii Teaching & Referral Hospital’s medical complex to a three-story building minutes from the Iranda catchment. This new office includes a ground-floor game room where teens from the surrounding area can relax and enjoy playing pool or watching TV before they attend lessons on topics such as STI prevention, mental health, sexual and gender-based violence, and teen pregnancy. (The teens wait outside the office gate each morning excited to play pool – they’re very passionate about the game, and even study advanced pool moves on their phones in their down time). The offices upstairs include a meeting room for the KIKOP Board, a classroom for the local youths, and physical records spanning back to when KIKOP began.

View from within the KIKOP office.

The work that KIKOP is doing has created a monumental shift in the quality of care that mothers and children receive in Kisii County; over the past several years, KIKOP has reached thousands of pregnant women and families in Matongo, Iranda and Nyagoto. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to be learning from the KIKOP team and the community in Kisii, and I hope to contribute my public health knowledge to support this wonderful group of people. I’m looking forward to the next few weeks!

Kait

Mothers Educating Mothers

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

Mothers educating mothers

Kisii, Kenya

Bwakire! My name is Shriti Pant (Nche Igonkorokwa Shriti Moraa!). I am currently completing my practicum with Curamericas Global, Inc. As an intern, I am working with the Kisii Konya Oroiboro Project (KIKOP) in Kisii, Kenya. KIKOP is a project which aims to reduce the rates of maternal and child mortality and address the most critical needs of the communities they serve. This is done through a peer-to-peer education system where mothers are provided with lessons that they pass on to other women and children in their community.

KIKOP project goals handwritten on the wall of the Matongo Birthing Center

I will be here for 6 weeks working on monitoring maternal and child health data and conducting a process evaluation on KIKOP’s maternal care groups in three catchments in Kisii County: Matongo, Iranda and Nyagoto. In addition, I will be creating curriculum on menstrual health, sexual and gender-based violence and post-partum mental health that can be used by the health promotors and community health volunteers to enhance the wellbeing of the neighborhood women and mothers in Kisii.

Today marks one week since I arrived in Kenya and apart from eating delicious food, I have had the chance to meet a lot of incredible people in the community who are working toward improving the quality of life of all people living in Kisii. During my time here, I have traveled with my program manager to the health and birthing centers in the Matongo, Nyagoto, and Iranda catchments. Each subcounty in Kisii county consists of multiple catchments and each catchment has 22-39 villages. Approximately 2,000 mothers are directly supported by this project!

Matongo Health Center

I had the opportunity to meet with community health volunteers, health promoters, public health officers, and many mothers and their babies. I was given a tour of the facilities, specifically the maternal care units, which consist of the delivery rooms, the antenatal care wards, and the post-natal care wards.

Example of what the birthing facilities look like on the inside.

The directors and nurses of each facility sat down with us to discuss the challenges and barriers that mothers have faced in each catchment and the invaluable work KIKOP has done in their communities since its inception in 2018. I feel a lot of pride and privilege to get to work with such a passionate and hard-working team for a short amount of time.

The maternal care wing of Irando Health Center.

With everything I have learned so far, I am excited to aid KIKOP in analyzing maternal and child health data and collaborate with them to further improve this program and ensure its continued success in the future.

On our way to meet with the community health volunteers outside of the Nyagoto birthing facility.

Learning from public health officers and community health volunteers working day and night to prevent death, disease, and stigma here in Kenya has taught me so much about intersectionality of healthcare, culture, and community resilience.

I am looking forward to the rest of my time here!

Shriti

From Alaska to Zambia: A Journey of Learning and Impact

Posted on by Adriana Gaona

It’s truly astonishing that nearly three weeks have passed since I arrived in Lusaka. My journey began on a Wednesday in late May, departing from my hometown in Alaska. After a day layover in Chapel Hill and a night in Cape Town, I traveled almost 10,000 miles to finally reach Zambia, feeling a mix of excitement, exhaustion, and being completely overwhelmed.

We are living in a city of almost 3 million people! Here is one of the busy roads outside of our neighborhood.

The first week was a bit challenging. I landed at an airport with no power, no working Wi-Fi, and no cell service. Fortunately, with the help of a few locals, I found my ride and was warmly welcomed. However, my card didn’t work at the ATM, and the local SIM card I purchased was malfunctioning. I was quickly introduced to “load shedding,” which involves prolonged power cuts throughout the day and night to conserve electricity, a necessity due to the severe drought affecting Zambia’s dam-dependent power supply. Despite these bumps, they seemed minor in comparison to the larger issues, and I was eager to get to work.

Overlooking the Zambezi River

This summer, I am serving as the Mixed Methods Data Analyst Intern for the PIKABU study through UNC Global Projects Zambia. Our goal is to integrate AI-generated, hand-held ultrasounds into regular antenatal care across six clinics in three districts in Zambia. The amount I learned in the first week alone was incredible. I had the opportunity to draft several documents, which we field-tested and finalized within days for use in our study conducting interviews. Work here moves fast, and it has been an amazing opportunity to learn about the logistics of the study and collaborate with the team. We visited one of the local clinics to meet with the community outreach team, aiming to improve communication and collaboration between teams. It has been insightful to see how work is accomplished here and how a study is accepted into the community.

In addition to working with the wonderful Zambian team, I’ve enjoyed doing independent research and learning, then applying this knowledge to tasks such as rapid qualitative analysis or time-motion studies. I’m excited to delve deeper into these activities in the coming weeks, particularly coding our responses!

Hippopotamuses popped up out of the water everywhere! We got to fall asleep listening to them in the river and wake up to see them lined up sleeping on one another as they floated down the river.

Work keeps me busy during the week, but my fellow UNC practicum student and I try to explore as much as we can on weekends. Our first weekend, we drove to Lower Zambezi, where we enjoyed river cruises at sunset and sunrise, spotting impalas, crocodiles, kudu, dozens of hippos, and three magnificent bachelor elephants. We even watched one cross the Zambezi River from Zimbabwe back into Zambia as the sun set behind us. This weekend, we hope to visit local markets and an elephant orphanage.

Over the past few weeks, we have settled into a nice routine and sorted out the initial challenges. We’ve bought candles, obtained our work visas, and mastered a makeshift charcuterie board for dinner. I’m excited to continue learning alongside my team. I feel incredibly fortunate to be here, actively engaged in improving maternal care for birthing individuals while working to increase access to antenatal care in rural areas.

 

Madisyn