A Letter from our CEO

In 2023, we entered the second year of our 5-year strategic plan. As a reminder, this plan centers on supporting governments in strengthening their community health systems by digitizing, skilling, supplying, supervising, and paying CHWs—to scale community health sustainably.

Prossy Muyingo, aCHW supported by Living Goods in Uganda.

Prossy, a community health worker (CHW) supported by Living Goods in Uganda, made a powerful statement about the urgent requirements of CHWs at the Women Deliver Conference I attended: “We need to be heard! We require skills, commodities, fair compensation, and access to digital tools to effectively carry out our duties.” These words resonate with our mission.

I’m proud of the Living Goods team and the significant progress we made against our goals in 2023, including:

1. In the three countries where we operate (Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso), governments are implementing electronic community health information systems (eCHIS) to eventually support 200,000 CHWs reaching 120 million people. While investing in the digital aspects is a good starting point, it is not enough to merely equip CHWs with digital tools; they must receive a comprehensive support package to be effective. Living Goods acknowledges that countries are at varying stages and commits to providing continuous support in their journeys.
2. Living Goods played a crucial role in securing the Kenyan government’s commitment to revamp the CHW program for all 100,000 CHWs across the country. We estimate this will result in $100 million in government-directed investment in community health across the country in the first year.
3. We are excited about the progress in Burkina Faso. In the inaugural year of our operations, CHWs in the Ziniaré learning site consistently met or surpassed key performance indicators, more than doubling the number of sick child treatments from Q1 to Q4. We are encouraged by the proactive leadership of the Ministry of Health (MoH) in developing the new National Community Health Strategy. Our focus remains on enhancing digital capacity within the MoH, especially as eCHIS continues to expand.
4. In Uganda, Living Goods collaborated with the government in developing the inaugural National Community Health Strategy, which will guide the implementation of community health initiatives across the country. We will keep advocating for the government to commit financial resources to operationalize the strategy.
5. On our people front, we continued on the journey to make Living Goods an inclusive and great place to work. Our focus centered on redistributing power, improving decision-making processes, and cultivating a safer, more open environment that encourages staff to speak up and challenge our traditional approaches. We are incredibly grateful for the CHWs who steadfastly serve their communities, the governments we collaborate with, our funders who actively support this work, and the partners we radically team up with and learn from.

Even with the many wins in 2023, we recognize that our work is far from complete. With the foundation of our strategy laid and strong momentum, I’m positive 2024 will bring even more positive developments to celebrate.