On August 24, 2015, the Nyeri County Reproductive Health and Family Planning Strategy 2015-2025 was launched. The costed strategy lays out the county's priorities and will be used as an advocacy and resource mobilization tool for implementation.
Advance Family Planning (AFP) partner African Women Leaders Network for Reproductive Health and Family Planning (AWLN) and local partner Nawiri Life Foundation worked closely with the Nyeri County Health Department to develop the plan.
Realizing that AWLN members have strategic contacts in Nyeri County, AFP’s Kenya team selected it as a focus area for 2014-2015. The AWLN Kenya team first met with Nyeri County leadership and the County Health Management Team in May 2014 to advocate for the county’s first family planning allocation. Already one of the best performing counties, with a 67% contraceptive prevalence rate (Kenya DHS 2014), it was challenging to get buy-in from the county leadership. The leadership insisted on a framework to support the development of a family planning budget line, which initiated the costed strategic plan process. The costed strategy aims to:
1. Present a baseline for the county to measure and increase its contraceptive prevalence rate
2. Provide specific budget lines and suggested incremental family planning allocations over the 10-year period, as well as indicators to measure implementation of the activities that will be developed by a Technical Working Group.
AWLN facilitated the process by funding a consultant to lead the process and work with a selected team from the county to craft the first draft of the strategy in early 2015. The process was consultative—as called for by the Kenyan Constitution— including government stakeholders, civil society, community and religious leaders, women's groups, youth groups and marginalised groups to work together to determine key priorities in reproductive health and family planning for the county for the next 10 years. The final draft of the strategic plan was produced after two months and three sets of focus group meetings and was subjected to review and validation on June 18 and 19th. The drafting team then worked with the consultant to finalize the document before its August launch.
In a speech during the launch, the County Executive Secretary of Health (equivalent to the Minister of Health) made a commitment to allocate 10% of the county’s health budget to family planning. Two civil society organizations have also committed support for various components of the budget.
AWLN will be monitoring to confirm that these commitments are honored and are identifying other counties to replicate this approach. They have already received requests from two other counties.
With the addition of Nyeri County, AFP has now supported the development and launch of seven county-level family planning strategic plans: Kakamega, Kitui, Siaya, and Tharaka Nithi counties through Jhpiego Kenya and Homa Bay and Busia counties through the Opportunity Fund. Jhpiego Kenya shared their experiences and lessons learned on the advocacy process from other counties with AWLN and Nawiri Life Foundation.