ITH ‘In Their Hands’ Project Year 3. Project period 1st April 2019 to 30th March 2020
Introduction to the In their Hands Project
‘In Their Hands’ is a Project implemented by a consortium consisting of Marie Stopes Kenya (MSK), Triggerise and Well Told Story (WTS-Shujaaz) with funding from CIFF (Children Investment Fund Foundation) and the Dutch Government. The programme’s key objective is to expand access to Sexual Reproductive Health Services and products (SRH) to adolescent girls aged 15-19 years ensuring that they choose when to get pregnant, mitigate the impact of HIV and STIs, and never resort to unsafe abortion. If the Consortium is able to achieve this objective effectively, our ultimate aim is to reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancies among Kenyan adolescent girls in the following 18 counties: Nakuru, Mombasa, Nairobi, Siaya, Kilifi, Vihiga, Trans Nzoia, Kakamega, Nyamira, Kisumu, Kericho, Busia, Migori, Bungoma, Kajiado, Narok, Kisii, Homa Bay.
ITH Consortium Member Roles and Responsibilities
Project Objective
Over three years, (April 2017 to March 2021) The ITH project intends to have reached 250,000 adolescent girls aged 15 -19 years with sexual and reproductive health services and products across the county. These services include counseling for contraception, contraception (long and short term), HIV self-testing
(Mombasa & Nairobi only) and Pregnancy testing ( youth-friendly pharmacy only). Year 1 of the project (April 2017 to March 2018), the project focused primarily on piloting programme interventions in Nakuru and Mombasa Counties to test the feasibility of proposed implementation approach and methodologies and on establishing the IT infrastructure required to monitor implementation in real-time. Year 2 and 3 focus on delivering programme interventions in 4 self-enrollment counties (Nakuru, Mombasa, Kisumu & Kajiado) and the other 14 priority Counties.
Program Implementation Approach
Ways an adolescent girl can access services and products through the ITH platform:
- Community Mobilization conducted by Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) and other mobilization workers, who use their phones to register girls either through phones or cards from the Project.
- Self Enrolment where a girl enrolls herself by sending an SMS to 22699 with the word
- Peer to Peer Enrolment where a girl who has received a service tells her friends about it, enrolls them by sending an SMS to 22699 with the word KINGA and earns a reward for successful referrals.
Once a girl is enrolled, they then visit a facility of their choice enrolled on the ITH platform to receive counselling and to decide based on the counselling, if they wish to up a service of their choice.
The facilities are accredited Youth Friendly Clinics and Pharmacies that are Franchised under MSK (Marie Stopes Kenya), PSK (Population Services Kenya) and (FHOK) Family Health of Kenya i.e. AMUAs, TUNZA, FHOK Clinics and Pharmacies. These services and products are offered free of charge as they subsidized by the project.
The services subsidized by the programme include:
- Counselling for contraception
- Injectable (DMPA- SC & DMPA- IM)
- Oral contraceptive pills
- Emergency contraceptive pills (Pharmacy only)
- Intrauterine Devices (IUDs)
- Counseling for HIV self-testing (Nairobi & Mombasa only)
- Pregnancy testing (Pharmacy only)
On completion of either counseling or uptake of service, they are asked to rate the counseling session or services received for which they earn redeemable points that can be redeemed for products such as sanitary products.
Year 3 Progress as at 9th August 2019
A total of 37,070 girls received services from the active Clinics & pharmacies. Below is a graph showing the service uptake from 1 April 2019 to 9th, August 2019 in the 18 counties.
Quality Assurance
Service Quality Assurance: A key ITH quality assurance approach is joint supervision with the CHMT which will be conducted on a quarterly basis to check both data and clinical quality in addition to the follow up on the annual audit action plans.
Challenges experienced in MSK in the implementation of ITH to date
