Leveraging the power of partnerships: spreading the vision for a population health care delivery model in western Kenya

Abstract Background The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) has been a model academic partnership in global health for nearly three decades, leveraging the power of a public-sector academic medical center and the tripartite academic mission – service, education, and research – to the challenges of delivering health care in a low-income setting. Drawing our mandate from the health needs of the population, we have scaled up service delivery for HIV care, and over the last decade, expanded our focus on non-communicable chronic diseases, health system strengthening, and population health more broadly. Success of such a transformative endeavor requires new partnerships, as well as a unification of vision and alignment of strategy among all partners involved. Leveraging the Power of Partnerships and Spreading the Vision for Population Health. We describe how AMPATH built on its collective experience as an academic partnership to support the public-sector health care system, with a major focus on scaling up HIV care in western Kenya, to a system poised to take responsibility for the health of an entire population. We highlight global trends and local contextual factors that led to the genesis of this new vision, and then describe the key tenets of AMPATH’s population health care delivery model: comprehensive, integrated, community-centered, and financially sustainable with a path to universal health coverage. Finally, we share how AMPATH partnered with strategic planning and change management experts from the private sector to use a novel approach called a ‘Learning Map®’ to collaboratively develop and share a vision of population health, and achieve strategic alignment with key stakeholders at all levels of the public-sector health system in western Kenya. Conclusion We describe how AMPATH has leveraged the power of partnerships to move beyond the traditional disease-specific silos in global health to a model focused on health systems strengthening and population health. Furthermore, we highlight a novel, collaborative tool to communicate our vision and achieve strategic alignment among stakeholders at all levels of the health system. We hope this paper can serve as a roadmap for other global health partners to develop and share transformative visions for improving population health globally

Delivery of HIV care during the 2007 post-election crisis in Kenya: a case study analyzing the response of the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) program

Abstract Background Widespread violence followed the 2007 presidential elections in Kenya resulting in the deaths of a reported 1,133 people and the displacement of approximately 660,000 others. At the time of the crisis the United States Agency for International Development-Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (USAID-AMPATH) Partnership was operating 17 primary HIV clinics in western Kenya and treating 59,437 HIV positive patients (23,437 on antiretroviral therapy (ART)). Methods This case study examines AMPATH’s provision of care and maintenance of patients on ART throughout the period of disruption. This was accomplished by implementing immediate interventions including rapid information dissemination through the media, emergency hotlines and community liaisons; organization of a Crisis Response leadership team; the prompt assembly of multidisciplinary teams to address patient care, including psychological support staff (in clinics and in camps for internally displaced persons (IDP)); and the use of the AMPATH Medical Records System to identify patients on ART who had missed clinic appointments. Results These interventions resulted in the opening of all AMPATH clinics within five days of their scheduled post-holiday opening dates, 23,949 patient visits in January 2008 (23,259 previously scheduled), uninterrupted availability of antiretrovirals at all clinics, treatment of 1,420 HIV patients in IDP camps, distribution of basic provisions, mobilization of outreach services to locate missing AMPATH patients and delivery of psychosocial support to 300 staff members and 632 patients in IDP camps. Conclusion Key lessons learned in maintaining the delivery of HIV care in a crisis situation include the importance of advance planning to develop programs that can function during a crisis, an emphasis on a rapid programmatic response, the ability of clinics to function autonomously, patient knowledge of their disease, the use of community and patient networks, addressing staff needs and developing effective patient tracking systems