Jane Rebecca Oluoch: Connecting marginalized communities through dialogue in Bondo, Kenya

Jane Rebecca Oluoch from Kenya was one of 775 Alumni of the Geneva Learning Foundation’s immunization programme who joined the first Immunization Agenda 2030 (IA2030) Impact Accelerator on 8 November 2021. The Accelerator is a new digital health system in which peers support each other across levels of the health system and geographic borders to turn action plans into specific actions, results, and – ultimately – document impact. At the Teach to Reach: Connect 4 event on 10 December, Jane shared the specifics of what she did in her local context – and what she discovered as she worked with peers from all over the world. “One of our actions was to meet our county PHN (Public health nurse) Coordinator for the immunization program. And I managed to meet her. We talked and planned on how to do action days. That was one. The next thing was to meet our CHVs, that is community health assistants attached to our health facility, which is Bondo sub county hospital so that we could talk and hear from them because they're the link to the people at the community level. We wanted to get from them; what are the challenges, what are the best practices we can do to improve immunization services in our facility. When we managed to meet the community health assistants, one of the challenges that they had was illiteracy among the women of reproductive age that are coming for immunization services. And on that point, we started doing health talks, and also through the CHVs again, they've been empowered, they've been trained on various health information activities. So we are using them to link people at the community level. When they go to the community from house to house they should tackle each and every woman's challenge, depending on what the woman will present with. Another thing. We managed to have a community dialogue, which took place in one of the villages in the community, which is Obedi village where we managed to meet the community members. We shared with them. We told them the importance of immunisation, they shared their fears and the majority of the women that came were very impressed. Also, on the dialogue day we carried with us some COVID and HPV vaccines and the women that were present were very happy and we managed to immunize some of the girls with the HPV vaccine and those who had not gotten a chance to reach the facility for the COVID vaccinations also got the chance to be vaccinated.” Request your invitation to join Teach to Reach: Connect, a unique quarterly event to meet, network, and learn with fellow immunization professionals from all over the world https://www.learning.foundation/teachtoreach