ASSESSING THE CAPACITY OF COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENTS IN KENYA USING THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION’S HEALTH SYSTEMS FRAMEWORK: IMPLICATIONS FOR SERVICE DELIVERY AND OUTCOMES

Year 2019, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 31 - 42, 01.04.2019

Vincent Okungu

https://doi.org/10.23884/ijhsrp.2019.4.1.04

Abstract

The
study used the county institutional capacity assessment tool (CICAT) to assess
the capacities of selected county health departments (CHDs) along the World
Health Organization (WHO) health systems framework that is organized around the
six building blocks. The aim was to determine the current status of the six
health system building blocks in Kenya’s county health departments.

The
article emanates from data collected for a technical report on county
institutional capacity assessment. Data were analysed using Microsoft Excel
spreadsheet and thematic analysis.

The
overall performance of the counties was 54% indicating average capacity. The
performance scores were: leadership and governance (39%), human resources for
health (44%), health information systems (66%), medical products and
technologies (50%), health system financing (50%), and service delivery (71%).
There was no statistically significant difference in the overall performance of
the counties (p= 0.892). The key issues in some of the worst performing
building blocks included poor work-planning and lack of transparency in
budgeting and expenditure, low funding and irregular disbursements of health
budgets, lack of key policies, e.g. workforce strategy and commodity supply
chain.

In
conclusion, the study proved that the CICAT is useful for assessing the process
of strengthening health systems in Kenyan counties. 

Keywords

Capacity development, health department, county, Kenya

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