Archive for: Kenya


Model households are a key aspect of Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB), an integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) project with sites in Kenya and Uganda. Model households are trained in multiple project activities to illustrate behaviors that allow families to thrive without taking a toll on their environment and natural resources. Model households exhibit positive behaviors, including practicing sustainable agriculture and resource planning, adopting alternative livelihoods, prioritizing reproductive health and family planning, and investing in clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing.

Year: 2016

Source: Pathfinder International

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    A successful population, health, and environment (PHE) project requires the full and equal participation of women and girls and men and boys. In order to address the urgent, interconnected challenges in the Lake Victoria Basin—poor maternal and child health, a lack of access to contraception, dwindling fish supply, deforestation, and more—interventions must also work towards gender equality. Women must be able to exercise their right to sexual and reproductive health care services, including their ability to choose if or when to have children. They must be able to participate in income-generating activities, which improve their economic situation and better equip them to protect their families and the natural resources they depend on. The Health of People and the Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) project works to promote gender equality. HoPE-LVB implements a range of activities, including training women’s and young mother’s groups on integrated health and conservation practices and conducting community dialogue sessions surrounding the intersection between gender, sexual and reproductive health, and the environment to bridge gender divides and encourage input and support from all community members.

    Year: 2014

    Source: Pathfinder International

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      The Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) project seeks to reduce threats to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem degradation in the LVB while simultaneously increasing access to family planning and reproductive health services, in order to improve maternal and child health in Kenya and Uganda. This brief discusses how HoPE-LVB builds the capacity of Beach Management Units (BMUs) to take collective responsibility to actively protect and restore fish stocks, their habitat, and the entire ecosystem they depend on. This goes hand-in-hand with harvest management— establishing who, when, and where to fish, as well as tracking and documenting the fish catches.

      Year: 2016

      Source: Pathfinder International

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        This brief discusses the importance of advocacy at multiple scales to build policymaker support for the Health of People and the Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE-LVB) project. Staff and partners have engaged key district, national, and regional health and environment officials in Kenya and Uganda. The project goals are to: (1) increase stakeholders’ understanding of the interconnectedness of PHE issues and the benefits of the PHE approach; (2) increase the key stakeholders’ capacity to communicate about the PHE approach; and (3) provide platforms for policy dialogue to influence regional and national stakeholders to integrate PHE into their programs.

        Year: 2016

        Source: Pathfinder International

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          This is a report of the baseline data for the Health of People and Environment-LVB (HoPE-LVB) Project, led by Pathfinder International. The Project aims to provide underserved families and communities with knowledge and skills to improve reproductive health, reduce levels of poverty through livelihoods, and sustainably manage local natural resources. The survey found that community knowledge levels were high but practice levels were low for sectoral outcomes. Engagement in community groups was high, suggesting opportunities to implement value-added population, health, and environment (PHE) activities. The policy review found that policies encourage PHE integration, but lack structures to facilitate implementation across sectors. The participatory rural assessment yielded information on the potential ‘value-added’ that HoPE-LVB can generate, identifying increased income and access to quality health services as key priorities for the project and noting key challenges to uptake of positive health and conservation practices.

          Year: 2013

          Source: Pathfinder International

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            Population Health and Environment (PHE) strategies are argued to improve ecosystem and human health by addressing family size and its effects on natural resource use, food security, and reproductive health. This study investigates men’s views on a PHE family planning (FP) programme delivered among the pastoral Samburu tribe in rural northern Kenya. Three focus group discussions and nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 Samburu men. These discussions revealed support for environmentally-sensitised family planning promotion. Men highlighted their dependency on natural resources and challenges faced in providing for large families and maintaining livestock during drought. These practices were said to lead to natural resource exhaustion, environmental degradation, and wildlife dispersal, undermining key economic benefits of environmental and wildlife conservation. Relating family size to the environment is a compelling strategy to improve support for FP among Samburu men. Kenyan policy-makers should consider integrating community-based PHE strategies among underserved pastoral groups living in fragile ecosystems.

            Year: 2017

            Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

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              Family planning is a cross-cutting intervention that can accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Kenya, family planning is a best buy that contributes to the nation’s growth and creates a path towards achieving the SDGs and Kenya’s Vision 2030. Developed in partnership with the National Council for Population and Development (NCPD) and with generous support from USAID Kenya and East Africa through the Policy, Advocacy, and Communication Enhanced for Population and Reproductive Health (PACE) Project, PRB has created a short video that demonstrates how family planning contributes to Kenya’s progress across all five SDG themes of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnerships. The video will be shared with policymakers throughout Kenya to enhance their understanding of the importance of family planning to realizing the SDGs.

              Year: 2017

              Source: Population Reference Bureau

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                This training resource was produced by the Green Belt Movement (GBM) and FHI 360 as part of the USAID-supported Program on Research for Strengthening Services (PROGRESS) Project in Kenya. GBM and FHI 360 developed this training manual to prepare Green Volunteers to implement activities that link population, health and the environment. The manual was revised based on feedback from pilot project trainings and research findings. The training manual can be used to guide a training that introduces Green Volunteers to PHE and to family planning, covers healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, offers skills-building opportunities, demonstrates how to use the PHE flip-book, and reviews basic reporting requirements for the project. The training manual, which is written in English, includes participant handouts in both English and Swahili, reporting forms, and a post-training evaluation form.

                Year: 2013

                Source: Green Belt Movement | FHI 360

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                  Small-scale pilot projects have demonstrated that integrated population, health and environment approaches can address the needs and rights of vulnerable communities. However, these and other types of health and development projects rarely influence larger policies and programmes. ExpandNet, a network of health professionals working on scaling up, argues this is because projects are often not designed with sustainability and scaling up in mind. This paper shows how this new approach is being applied and the initial lessons from its use in the Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin Project (HoPE-LVB) currently underway (2011-2017) in Uganda and Kenya. Specific emerging lessons are: 1) ongoing, meaningful stakeholder engagement has significantly shaped the design and implementation, 2) multi-sectoral projects are complex and striving for simplicity in the interventions is challenging, and 3) projects that address a sharply felt need experience substantial pressure for scale up, even before their effectiveness is established. This paper recommends that other projects would also benefit from applying a scale-up perspective from the outset.

                  Year: 2014

                  Source: Reproductive Health Matters

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                    The USAID-funded Advancing Partners & Communities Project received funding for population, health, and environment (PHE) approaches in East Africa. The Nyanza Reproductive Health Society (NRHS) received an 18-month grant to pilot community PHE approaches in fragile ecosystems with at-risk populations in the Lake Victoria Basin region of Western Kenya. The NRHS team was tasked with creating a sustainable PHE model that integrates all PHE components—population (community-based family planning); health (linkages with the Kenyan health system); environment (conservation of fragile ecosystems, reforestation, beach management, etc.); and significant livelihoods components. This document details challenges, lessons learned and other takeaways regarding the sustainability of the activities.

                    Year: 2016

                    Source: Advancing Partners & Communities Project

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