Engagement and partnership with peer mentors in the development of the “Positive and Healthy Living Program”: a process paper

ABSTRACT

Partnership and engagement are mediators of change in the efficient uptake of evidence-based patient-centered health interventions. We reflect on our process of engagement and preparation of peer mentors in the development of peer-led psychotherapy intervention for HIV infected adolescents in active care at the Comprehensive Care Centre (CCC) at Kenyatta National Hospital. The program was implemented in two phases, using a Consultation, Involve, Collaboration and Empowerment approach as stepping stones to guide our partnership and engagement process with stakeholders and ten peer mentors embedded in the CCC. Our partnership process promoted equity, power-and-resource sharing including making the peer mentors in-charge of the process and being led by them in manual development. This process of partnership and engagement demonstrated that engaging key stakeholders in projects lead to successful development, implementation, dissemination and sustainment of evidence-based interventions. Feedback and insights bridged the academic and clinical worlds of our research by helping us understand clinical, family, and real-life experiences of persons living with HIV that are often not visible in a research process. Our findings can be used to understand and design mentorship programs targeting lay health workers and peer mentors at community health care levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Engagement
• partnership
• peer mentors
• collaboration
• equity
• empowerment

Acknowledgements

The authors’ engagement sessions were supported by UNFPA through I Choose Life, Kenya. The authors would like to thank Lilian Langat, Kigen Korir from UNFPA for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Grace Nduku Wambua http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1795-6634

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Kenyatta National Hospital research fund (ref no. KNH/R&P/23F/75/9).