Communication for Change (C-Change) Program Kenya: Quarterly Report

This report describes and assesses the social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) activities conducted in Kenya from April to June 2010 by Communication for Change (C-Change), which is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded programme. The goal is to improve the SBCC capacity of 3 partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - Medical Emergency Relief International (MERLIN), World Vision, and PATH - to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate effective malaria control SBCC programmes and interventions.

In short, as reported here, all the partner NGOs intensified their community- and facility-level activities in advance of the malaria high transmission season. Utilising a variety of SBCC approaches - ranging from household visits, community dialogue, theatre, health facility discussions, group talks, and community gatherings like barazas (palaver or meeting) and church meetings - the partner NGOs in the targeted districts supplemented their activities with malaria prevention and treatment messages broadcast on a number of community radio stations.

For example:

• MERLIN held 68 barazas, 482 malaria sessions in churches, 3 road shows reaching out to about 3,400 people, 15,264 household visits conducted by Community-Owned Resource Persons (CORPS), 11 integrated mobile outreaches, 1,235 facility-based health education sessions, 35 community theatre events, and 62 antenatal care (ANC) escorts (CORPS accompanied women to their medical appointments). Merlin, in collaboration with Division of Malaria Control (DOMC) staff and Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MOPHS) staff, also conducted a 5-day training for 26 health workers which focused on improving the clinician-patient relationship as well as improving data quality. "As a result of the training, there is evidence of improved record keeping of Malaria data in the 30 health facility sentinel sites identified by Merlin for tracking selected indicators."
• World Vision, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MOPHS), Provincial Administration, and community health workers (CHWs), aired ten 1-hour interactive malaria radio programmes over a period of 3 months. Health workers, CHWs, and community members who had changed behaviour identified by the project gave relevance to malaria messages and sought to convince others to adopt preventive changes. CHWs organised listening groups in different locations in the district to listen to sessions together and deepen their understanding through dialogue.
• PATH, in advance of World Malaria Day, organised a series of site visits in Western and Nyanza province with 5 journalists to prepare them to document stories emerging from that day. Also, using the revised reporting and data collection forms developed by C-Change, PATH collected the relevant malaria indicators.

Beginning on page 8 of the report, selected data from the 3 organisations related to the 3 key indicators (long-lasting insecticide impregnated net (LLIN) utilisation, prompt and appropriate treatment for children under five, and intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTP) utilisation) are presented.

As part of its reporting system, C-Change documented 3 malaria success stories demonstrating individual-level changes and gains from project interventions. These success stories centred around changed perceptions, attitudes, and practice of community members on malaria. They also demonstrate the change that CHWs are bringing to the community.

Concluding pages examine other components of C-Change's work in Kenya: coordination of media outreach for the launch of family planning (FP)/reproductive health (RH) documents in order to galvanise media attention of government efforts to revitalise the FP/RH programme in Kenya, as well as C-Change's experience with developing male circumcision materials, including a 10-minute soccer-based video coinciding with the 2010 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup.

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