Many health conditions uniquely or disproportionally affect women and girls and a lack of informed participation often results in health services that are inaccessible, unaffordable, and inappropriate. The role of women in health care leadership, particularly at primary care level is key to changing this reality yet although the majority of primary health care workers globally are women, they continue to be poorly represented in leadership and management positions.
Primary Care International (PCI) recently worked with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, IntraHealth International and Strathmore Business School on an initiative to strengthen Kenya’s health care system and implementation of Primary Health Care (PHC) through building the capacity of health managers on leadership, management and governance. The project was supported by the UK Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) under the direction of Global Health Partnerships (formally THET).
PCI has a strong commitment to Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) and, as such, we were engaged to lead activities to integrate GESI into the Kenya primary health care training programme. Our GESI approach seeks to understand harmful and discriminating gender and social norms and power imbalances and identify appropriate ways to tackle these through the design and delivery of primary health care services and health care leadership. Participant and stakeholder feedback indicated that the training contributed significantly to integrating GESI into Kenya’s Primary Care Network model, addressing leadership gaps, and enhancing inclusivity. Insights from this approach have been captured in a technical brief Integrating Gender Equality and Social Inclusion into Leadership, Management, and Governance Training which can be accessed here:Technical-Brief-GESI
Please contact PCI at mail@pci-360.com if you would like to find out more about this work.