Community Health Promoters (CHPs) are a critical link between households and the health system. Every day, they support families experiencing illness, financial hardship and complex social challenges—work that can carry a significant emotional and psychological burden.

Evidence from the NIHR-SHINE study, led in Kenya by Lvcthealth and APHRC, involving more than 1,200 CHPs in Nairobi and Kiambu, found that 22.4% reported symptoms suggestive of depression, 30.6% experienced anxiety and 12.7% experienced stress.

Through SHINE, we are moving from evidence to action.

The project is testing a practical package of support that combines mental-health literacy, self care through WHO’s Doing What Matters in Times of Stress, peer support, supportive supervision and regular SMS based mental health messaging.

So far, 500 CHPs in Nairobi and Kiambu have been reached, while CHP champions and supervisors are being equipped to recognise distress, provide supportive listening and help address workplace challenges.

But the ambition goes beyond a single intervention.

Our goal is to contribute evidence that can help make CHP mental health and wellbeing a routine part of community health systems, recognised, supported, budgeted for and ultimately scaled.

Because strengthening community health systems also means caring for the people who make them work. Medicine (LSTM), and BRAC JPGSPH, the study examines the unseen factors affecting frontline health workers.

Read the feature : Inside community health promoters’ mental health crisis