Client experience is a critical, yet underutilized benchmark for quality in maternal health systems. Feedback from women about their experiences of care can help governments make targeted improvements faster, spend limited resources smarter, and build resilient health systems that earn long-term trust from their constituents.
Kenya faces a dichotomy. On the one hand, there is strong political will to improve the quality of care for mothers and babies, but poor visibility on where to direct resources for greatest impact. Meanwhile, mothers could offer rich insight into health systems, but few formal channels exist to solicit their opinion.
What remains is a gap between care provision and care experience. Governments in many low- and middle-income countries rely on facility-reported data in national informatics systems like DHIS2. These data do not reflect how care is experienced in the wards: i.e. whether a mother experiences stigma, or a prenatal visit includes the recommended lab tests and education.
About the authors
Sathy Rajasekharan
Sathy Rajasekharan, Ph.D., is the co-executive director of Jacaranda Health. Prior to Jacaranda, Sathy was a senior program manager for the drug access and health financing teams of the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Eswatini, associate director of the McGill University Centre for Biomedical Innovation, and associate director at the Montreal Neurological Institute.
Christine Njuguna
Christine Njuguna is Jacaranda Health’s head of product. She has over six years of experience in management consulting, including at One Acre Fund where she worked as a consultant for the internal consulting team for four years, working with smallholder farmers across Africa. Prior to joining One Acre Fund, she worked for Open Capital Advisors as a business analyst.
Laura Down
Laura Down specializes in global health communications across East Africa and the United Kingdom. She lives in Nairobi, Kenya, serving as head of global communications at Jacaranda Health. Prior to Jacaranda, she led communications at Partners In Health’s sister organization, UGHE, in Rwanda; held consultancies at UNICEF and Babyl; and worked in global advertising agencies in London.
