Learning From Practitioners: Enabling Innovation to Improve Refugee Health Education in Kakuma, Kenya

Abstract

This thesis aims to inform the work of organizations doing refugee health promotion and education in the Kakuma camps in Turkana, Kenya. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports there are 194,914 registered refugees hosted across four camps in Kakuma as of February 2020. UNHCR has estimated that the ratio of community health workers to refugees there is less than 1:1000, indicating the need for being efficient and effective in refugee health education activities. A series of exploratory, qualitative interviews and field observations with sixteen health education practitioners from six organizations working across different health topics was conducted to address the main research questions of: 1) What are the perspectives of community health practitioners on the opportunities and challenges for innovating to improve refugee health education in Kakuma? 2) What forms of support would community health practitioners like from their employing organizations and other stakeholders to continue innovating to improve refugee health education in Kakuma? These interviews and observations were coded and analyzed to generate themes, which were subsequently used to develop recommendations to share with the participating organizations that were interested in hearing the perspectives of their practitioners. Adapted versions of these recommendations were also developed to engage additional stakeholders working in refugee health education and promotion in Kakuma. These recommendations are intended to serve as a resource for participating organizations and the wider community of stakeholders working on refugee health education, primarily in Kakuma but potentially also in the broader East African region and beyond. Furthermore, this work can provide insight from practitioners on the ground about how they would like to be better supported in innovating in their daily work to improve refugee health awareness and outcomes. The evidence base generated from these interviews and observations can potentially also be used to advocate for channeling more resources to refugee health education practitioners in Kakuma.