Country: Kenya
Sector: Health, Marginalized Populations
Background:
A public health NGO planned to extend primary healthcare services to nomadic pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya.
To guide service design and deployment, they commissioned a needs assessment to map out health challenges, access barriers, and community preferences in these mobile populations.
Approach:
Our team adopted a mobile ethnographic research approach, shadowing pastoralist groups over several weeks. We conducted structured interviews with 400 community members, traditional birth attendants, and local healers, and reviewed clinic records from three sub-county hospitals. Participatory mapping and seasonal calendar tools were used to understand health-seeking behavior across migration cycles.
Findings:
The assessment revealed that maternal and child health issues were the most pressing, with high incidences of preventable complications due to poor antenatal care and reliance on traditional medicine. Access barriers included long distances to health facilities, lack of culturally appropriate services, and distrust of external healthcare workers. Vaccination uptake was particularly low among children under five, and gender norms restricted women’s autonomy in seeking care.
