IntraHealth has partnered with the Government of Kenya and health sector leaders since 2009 to strengthen and transform health workforce systems in the public, private, and faith-based sectors to enhance health service delivery and, ultimately, improve health outcomes for the people of Kenya. The Capacity Kenya project aims to strengthen health workforce policy and planning, build the knowledge and skills of health workers, and improve health worker productivity and retention.

Selected initiatives

• Developing and supporting the Rapid Hire Program (RHP) started under the Capacity Project, which improved the hiring process and decreased recruitment and deployment time from a minimum of six to three months. More than 1,000 health workers are currently supported by Capacity Kenya under the program.

• Convening the first National Human Resources for Health (HRH) Conference in December 2011 with over 500 participants

• Improving multi-stakeholder collaboration in HRH by strengthening the HRH Inter-Agency Coordinating Committee

• Strengthening HRH records management and installing and supporting the iHRIS Suite—open source software developed by IntraHealth that helps health sector managers assess staffing problems and design and evaluate effective solutions. Data on more than 43,300 health workers are currently tracked and used to inform county-level deployment plans.

Addressing the knowledge and skills needed by health workers at levels

• Conducting a national performance needs assessment of the health training system which shaped the design of the FUNZOKenya project

• Launching a Center for Excellence in Family Planning at the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) in Kitui including training KMTC faculty on how to use a new skills lab through a partnership with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Improving productivity and retention of health workers

• Creating a new performance appraisal system, including a toolkit that allows national and local health facility managers to better evaluate themselves and the workers they supervise. As of September 2012, toolkits have been distributed in all eight provinces with over 75% compliance reported.

• Collaborating with the Ministry for the Development of Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands to recruit more students into the health care field; providing more than 60 scholarships to encourage recipients to staff health facilities in underserved areas; and offering more health workers distance learning and professional development opportunities.