Improving access to public health facilities for Mothers and Newborns

The number of women giving birth in facilities is steadily increasing around the world, but maternal and newborn health outcomes are still poor. In Kenya, over 6,000 women die annually during childbirth. Only 8% of poor women in Kenya are able to access quality maternal health services, and many don’t have the right information at their fingertips to make informed choices about where to seek care, and when.
Jacaranda Health partners with governments to deploy affordable, equitable, and evidence-based solutions that address the drivers of maternal and newborn death. They focus on improving care and access to the public health facilities where the majority of underserved mothers and babies receive care. In Kenya, they work with the National Ministry of Health and with 20 Kenyan County Governments, with solutions deployed across 1,000+ hospitals and health centers.
Jacaranda Health has developed a package of two linked, low-cost solutions that they deploy alongside government partners in Kenya:
- PROMPTS: A digital health platform for mothers that increases care-seeking behavior at the right time and place.
- MENTORS: A facility-based program that efficiently increases and sustains provider skills in basic and emergency obstetric and newborn care.
Jacaranda’s programs currently reach over 1M Kenyan mothers and thousands of frontline nurses and midwives across over 1000 health facilities. They have seen dramatic improvements in health seeking behaviors, such as increased prenatal and postnatal care, family planning, and care-seeking during emergencies; as well as significant and sustained improvements in performance of frontline nurses and midwives in public hospitals. They are also seeing reductions in newborn mortality and preventable maternal complications. Their government partners have been using their data to make smarter, more equitable decisions about allocating health resources, and are already helping share the costs of operating these programs which will be key to long term sustainability.
Nick Pearson and Sathy Rajasekharan are Co-Executive Directors of Jacaranda Health. Nick holds an Adjunct Faculty position at Duke University’s Duke Global Health Institute and has worked at the intersection of business and global health in East Africa, Vietnam, and India. Prior to founding Jacaranda, Nick worked at Acumen Fund, investing in businesses in Kenya. Nick is a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow, a Rainer Arnolds Fellow, and an Ashoka Young Champion of Maternal Health. Nick is board chair of Jacaranda Maternity, Jacaranda Health’s sister social enterprise. Nick is married to an obstetrician and global health researcher and spent most of his childhood outside of the US.
Dr. Sathy Rajasekharan oversees the organization's mission of delivering low-cost, sustainable solutions through public hospitals to improve maternal and newborn health outcomes. Prior to joining Jacaranda Health, Sathy was a Senior Program Manager for the Drug Access and Health Financing teams of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and led CHAI’s work providing technical assistance to the Swaziland Ministry of Health. He has held previous positions as the Associate Director of the McGill University Centre for Biomedical Innovation (MCBI), where he helped develop a commercialization plan for health technologies. Sathy holds a Ph.D. in Neurology and Neurosurgery. He was born in a public hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

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Photo of Nick Pearson and Sathy Rajasekharan

We believe all mothers and babies – rich or poor – deserve to have access to safe and respectful healthcare. We think that systemic inequities in health care can be addressed with local solutions, and that sustainable, measurable solutions can transform the way care is accessed and delivered for those who need it most.