Training community health volunteers to use mobile platform during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Kenya experience.

This study describes an alternative to face-to-face training method for community health volunteers (CHVs) as used by a collaborative group from the University of Nairobi, University of Washington and the Nairobi Metropolitan Mental Health Team during the COVID-19 lockdown in Kenya. This qualitative study describes the experiences of 17 CHVs enrolled in a training study, required to utilize different digital platforms (Google Meet or Jitsi) as a training forum for the first time. Verbatim extracts of the participants' daily experiences are extracted from a series of write-ups in the group WhatsApp just before the training. Daily failures and success experiences in joining a Google meet or Jitsi are recorded. Then, 17 participants, 10 women and 7 men, aged between 21 and 51 years (mean = 33), owning a smartphone, were enrolled in the study. None had used Jitsi or Google meet before. Different challenges were reported in login to either and a final decision to use Jitsi, which became the training platform. Training CHVs to deliver a psychosocial intervention using smartphones is possible. However, the trainer must establish appropriate and affordable methods when resources are constrained.

Sustainable Partnerships to Ensure Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP) for Adolescents.

Ensuring that sustainable and effective mental health services are available for children and adolescents is a growing priority for national governments. However, little guidance exists on how to support service implementation. In Kenya, partnerships were formed among regional government, nongovernmental organizations, and universities to implement Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP)-Nairobi, a pilot project to train and supervise nonspecialists delivering psychological support to adolescents. Lessons were learned about integrating psychological services into existing health services by using the EQUIP platform to assess competencies, engaging partners for supervision and quality improvement, and involving youth stakeholders. The partnerships facilitated a rapid transition to remote services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The EQUIP-Nairobi project results offer lessons for partnerships in other low-resource settings.

Voices from the Youth in Kenya Addressing Mental Health Gaps and Recommendations.

Studies including adolescents and young people (AYP) enhance the relevance of research results, benefit stakeholders, and inform future research. There exists a mental health gap in services for AYP living in low and middle-income countries. This study aims to identify mental health challenges faced by adolescents and young people in Kenya, develop practical recommendations to mitigate these issues, and reduce the mental health burden among this population. We convened an AYP-led meeting that involved 41 participants. The meeting objectives were to (1) identify efforts to support existing national and regional strategic priorities and review goals for addressing mental health needs among AYPs, (2) develop immediate action plans for strengthened mental health services, (3) review and strengthen country-level coordination mechanisms, and (4) identify how participating county experiences can inform mental health services in Kenya. Ministry of Health (MoH) officials from national and county levels, academic experts, and implementing partner agencies involved in mental health services participated in the meeting. The team, including AYP representatives, identified various mental health challenges among the AYA and recommended interventions aimed towards improving their mental health situation in the country. The challenges were clustered into three themes and comprehensively reviewed to establish the precipitating factors to mental health outcomes among AYPs in Kenya and provide recommendations. The themes included (1) legislative, (2) service provider/Ministry of Health, and (3) adolescent/individual-level factors. To bridge the mental health gap in the country and scale up mental health outcomes, the stakeholders recommended interventions within the context of the three clusters. The key suggestions included an increase in insurance financing, acceleration of community health interventions, the establishment of adolescent-friendly spaces, the training of adolescent youth champions, interactive service provision models, implementation of the existing mental health policies and structures, the development of comprehensive assessment tools, well equipped mental health departments in health facilities, the enhancement of telehealth services and digital villages, the mobilization of a functional mental health response team, and the development of a mental health database.