Celebrating African Motherhood - Amref

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Health Interventions by AMREF in Kajiado District, Kenya’; and ‘Effi cacy of
Community-based Health Care in Kenya: Evaluation of AMREF’s 30 Years in
Kibwezi’.
Institutional Capacity Building
• The Directorate continued building research capacities for AMREF
staff , both in the directorate and in the diff erent AMREF Country
Programmes. The main activities focused on conceptualisation of
research problems, development of research questions, development
of research methodology, as well as preparation of case studies and
discussion papers.
• The Directorate has been involved in the teaching and supervision of
students in AMREF’s Diploma in Community Health and Master’s in
Public Health courses. The Directorate also participated in preparation
of the curriculum for the proposed BSc in Community Health course.
• AMREF worked together with other civil society groups at the G8
2009 Conference to ensure that the critical issue of strengthening
Human Resources for Health in Africa was discussed at the meeting.
A publication in the G8 newsletter on ‘Crippling Global Health Worker
Shortage’ was developed in collaboration with the Health Workforce
Advocacy Initiative (HWAI).
At the same time, a briefi ng note to the G8 health expert group titled
‘The role of mid-level and community health workers: A systemic
approach to task shifting’ was developed in collaboration with HWAI.
• The Directorate’s research initiatives have enlisted collaboration with
Moi University (Kenya), Makerere University (Uganda), Kenyatta
University (Kenya) and University of Nairobi (Kenya).
Health Learning Materials
AMREF’s Health Learning Materials unit contributes to health development,
improved service provision in general and to training of health workers in
particular, through production of a broad range of up-to-date learning and
teaching materials, periodicals and manuals. These are targeted at clinical
offi cers, medical assistants, nurses and midwives, laboratory technicians,
public health offi cers and other frontline health workers in developing
countries.
In 2009, the unit published several publications including ‘Training Health
Care Professionals’; ‘Community Health (3rd edition)’; and the second
edition of the ‘Procedure Manual for Nurses and Midwives’.
Community Partnering
The Directorate of Community Partnering at AMREF is grounded on
the premise that for health systems to meet the needs of the poor, they
must be centred on people and communities. The Directorate’s objective
is to harness community resources to improve health service delivery and
to create grassroots movements and organisations which ensure that
communities are an integral part of health systems that are responsive to
their needs. It supports fi eld programmes in the various countries where
AMREF works through creation of tools, skills development and provision
of technical support.
Gender Mainstreaming
Gender is now largely mainstreamed in projects in the Country
Programmes, with tools for appraisal of individual activities, data collection
and analysis for reporting, and for monitoring and evaluation. Close to 400
AMREF staff have now been trained on gender, and have begun to pass on
the lessons to the partners on the ground.
Sexual Reproduction and Child Health
The Directorate is progressively introducing a regional approach to
programme development and management, which creates greater
opportunities for research and cross-border learning and sharing of
lessons for more eff ective solving of community health problems. The
regional Nomadic Youth Reproductive Health programme that is being
implemented in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania is carrying out major
research that will lead to greater understanding of nomadic health issues
and models for service delivery in nomadic settings. Collaboration with
the Royal Tropical Institute of the Netherlands is helping build the research
skills of the 30 staff members involved, something that is catalysing greater
interest in operations research in other projects in the country programmes.