Lwala Community Alliance

Maternal & Child Health: Lwala deploys professionalized community health workers to deliver care in homes. Core to our model is the incorporation of traditional birth attendants into professionalized cadres of community health workers. We pay, train, supervise and digitally empower community health workers to extend health services to every household. We track individualized data that demonstrates high achievements on immunization coverage, skilled delivery rates and under 5 mortality. We use digital tools and data to support health decision making and accelerate training and support of health workers at scale.

Adolescents & Youth Working with the youth to reach fellow young people, we deliver innovative adolescent and youth sexual reproductive health in and out of school. We create youth friendly spaces for accessing SRH services, distribute contraceptives in the community, and build agency of girls and boys to make informed choices and to complete school.

Lwala Community Hospital - The community of Lwala, Kenya was suffering from the dual burden of high maternal mortality and HIV prevalence. Rather than wait for help to come to them, village members donated their own land, resources, labour, and expertise to build Lwala Community Hospital. Over time, the hospital has grown into a full-scale movement for community-led health-a movement poised to transform Kenya's health system. The hospital provides care to more than 60,000 patients annually and conducts delivery for more than 700 babies annually. The innovations teste at Lwala hospital are scaled up to improve quality of health care in several health facilities in Kenya.

Health Systems Strengthening Through bottom-up innovation, Lwala incubates and measures new programs that improve health outcomes. As a result, we have been called upon by the national Ministry of Health (MOH) to develop or revise national policies, guidelines, and curricula. As these national documents are finalized, Lwala then works with the MOH to pilot, evaluate, and scale-up these approaches. We use the set policies and guidelines to strengthen the county health system and build its ability to deliver healthcare for all.

Centers of Excellence The community of Lwala village donated land and resources to bring health care to their community and constructed the area's first health clinic. Today, the Lwala Community Hospital provides care to more than 60,000 patient visits a year and delivery for over 700 babies. We test innovations at the Lwala hospital which we then use to improve care in hundreds of health facilities across the health system. Examples include Obstetric Hemorrhage bundle with the Non-pneumatic Antishock Garment (NASG) and neonatal resuscitation (Helping Babies Breathe) that is informing emergency obstetric care practices across Kenya. Our goal is to elevate Lwala Community Hospital as a Center of Excellence, a hospital modeling, teaching and advancing dignified, holistic, patient-centered primary health care.

WASH & Vulnerable Groups Consistent with our belief that holistic interventions best serve at-risk populations, Lwala addresses HIV and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) together in an integrated program. Research shows that HIV-positive individuals are more susceptible to malaria, diarrhea, and other enteric diseases. Therefore, we implement WASH interventions in conjunction with HIV care to reduce the relative risk for malaria and diarrheal diseases among people living with HIV/AIDS. Our model empowers community members to elevate WASH standards in their own communities and is implemented alongside the Migori County Ministry of Health.