Kaloleni/Rabai Community Health and Demographic Surveillance System
Project Period: 2021 - 2022
Collaborators: Aga Khan University’s Department of Population Health and the Brain and Mind Institute
Project Summary: Kaloleni/Rabai Community Health and Demographic Surveillance System (KRHDSS) is a demographic and health information registry of residents of Kaloleni and Rabai Sub-counties in the coast of Kenya. The system was developed and is maintained by Aga Khan University’s Department of Population Health in collaboration with the Health Management of the two Sub-counties. It is implemented every six months within the household registration function of the community health volunteers under the Community Health Strategy of the Ministry of Health. The specific aims of KRHDSS include:
To enhance community-ownership of their health information and ability to initiate data-driven community health planning and decisions
To provide a robust platform serving the University’s needs for population-level health research, program implementation and academic programming; and
To strengthen the capacity of the local department of health for collection, processing and use of population-level demographic, health, and vital events data.
The Brain and Mind Institute is collaborating in this surveillance to collect preliminary data on the burden of depression and anxiety. To achieve this objective, we are using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) to screen the population for symptoms of depression and anxiety by nesting this tool on the 10th round of data collection within the KRHDSS. This data will serve as an entry point into the Kenyan health research scene and as a baseline on which the Institute will further develop part of its future research endeavours.
