Assessment of community health promoters’ experiences and perspectives on mHealth utilization in Busia Teso North sub-county, Kenya

Zipporah M. Nyangacha; Dominic Mogere; Ruth Mbugua

doi:10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20253222

Authors

Zipporah M. Nyangacha Department of Public Health, Mount Kenya University, Kenya
Dominic Mogere School of Public Health, Mount Kenya University, Kenya
Ruth Mbugua School of Health Sciences, Mama Ngina University, Kenya

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20253222

Keywords:

mHealth, Community health workers, Community health promoters, Service provision

Abstract

Background: The use of mobile health (mHealth) technology to manage health-related issues has shown great potential in enhancing the quality of healthcare and reducing maternal and child mortality rates. Many Low- & Middle-income countries (LMIC) countries have implemented this innovation in small scale programming and in pilot stages. In Kenya, mHealth technology was scaled nationally across all community health promoters (CHPs) providing an opportunity to gather insights on the CHPs experiences and perspectives on mHealth use for service provision in Busia's Teso North Subcounty.

Methods: A qualitative study design was used to collect data between August–September 2024 and involved three focus group discussions with 24 community Health promoters aged between 30-55 years. Participants were purposefully sampled and only those residing in Busia Teso North subcounty were eligible. Data analysis was done using thematic analysis.

Results: Findings showed that CHPs perceived the use of mHealth app as a beneficial tool for their work. They reported that the app had significantly simplified and reduced their workload, facilitated easier access to information from previous visits, track which families needed to be visited and enabled them to visualize their performance through an in-built dashboard. Some of the barriers that emerged included Unreliable power supply that significantly disrupted service delivery, network challenges and technical barriers such as app logouts and errors loading.

Conclusions: There is need to address emerging issues such as app logout, errors loading and power challenges. Further, integrating Basic trouble shooting skills into the training curriculum to help reduce turnaround time.

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