Jacaranda Health: How a Quiet Innovation Movement Is Transforming Maternal Care in Kenya

For more than a decade, Jacaranda Health has been quietly reshaping maternal and newborn care across Kenya, through simple, scalable, and deeply human innovations that strengthen the public health system from within.

At a time when maternal mortality remains a major challenge in many African countries, Jacaranda Health has built a model that combines digital tools, data-driven decision-making, and frontline mentorship to save lives and improve the experience of childbirth for mothers across the country. Their approach may not always make headlines, but its impact is felt every single day, in hospitals, in communities, and in the lives of families who rely on public health facilities.

Today, Jacaranda Health stands out as one of Africa’s most successful maternal health innovators, showing what’s possible when technology works hand-in-hand with the realities of low-resource healthcare settings.

Where the Journey Began: Listening to What Mothers Really Needed

Jacaranda Health started with a simple observation. Many women were still facing dangerous pregnancies and preventable complications because the information, support, and timely care they needed were often out of reach. Public hospitals were overstretched. Nurses and midwives were overworked. Mothers lacked reliable guidance during pregnancy and postpartum. And when emergencies happened, help sometimes came too late.

The founders saw that improving maternal health required more than building new clinics, it required rethinking the system itself, starting from the needs of mothers and the limitations faced by frontline health workers. What emerged was a two-part innovation model that’s now recognized across the continent:

• PROMPTS – an SMS platform that supports mothers with lifesaving information and identifies complications early.

• MENTORS – a program that strengthens nurse and midwife capacity through hands-on training, mentorship, and continuous quality improvement.

Together, these solutions form one of the most practical, scalable, and impactful maternal health models in Africa.

PROMPTS: SMS Technology Helping Mothers Stay Safe

Long before digital health became a buzzword, Jacaranda Health launched PROMPTS, a simple but powerful tool that offers mothers personalized pregnancy and postpartum support directly through SMS.

Here’s how it works:

• Mothers register for free during antenatal or postpartum visits.
• PROMPTS sends tailored health messages and regular check-ins.
• When a mother reports danger signs, the system flags it immediately.
• Nurses in nearby facilities receive alerts and follow up with the mother directly.

By using SMS instead of smartphone apps, PROMPTS ensures accessibility for thousands of families, including those who don’t have smartphones or reliable internet access. Today, hundreds of thousands of mothers have benefited from PROMPTS across Kenya. The platform has caught complications early, encouraged timely care-seeking, and strengthened trust in public health facilities. It’s a quiet but powerful example of digital innovation tailored for real-world conditions.

MENTORS: Strengthening the Backbone of Maternal Care – Nurses & Midwives

If PROMPTS supports mothers, MENTORS supports the frontline workers who care for them. Jacaranda Health understood that improving maternal outcomes depends heavily on the skills, confidence, and support given to nurses and midwives. MENTORS is designed to build their capacity through simulation-based training for emergency obstetric and newborn care; regular facility-based mentorship; hands-on coaching during real clinical cases; data-driven performance monitoring; and continuous professional development sessions

This model ensures that skills don’t fade after training, they are reinforced day after day in the actual environments where emergencies occur. As a result, facilities supported by Jacaranda Health consistently report:

• Faster emergency response
• Improved adherence to clinical protocols
• Better communication between staff
• More respectful and patient-centered care

MENTORS is not just a training program; it’s a long-term workforce strengthening system that embeds itself into public health facilities.

A Public Sector Partnership Model That Actually Works

One of Jacaranda Health’s greatest strengths is its commitment to working directly inside the public health system, not outside it. Instead of creating parallel services, Jacaranda partners with county health ministries; public hospitals; government nurses and midwives; and community health volunteers

This allows their tools to integrate seamlessly with existing workflows. PROMPTS connects mothers to public providers; MENTORS strengthens the same providers on the ground. This alignment is why county governments across Kenya increasingly adopt Jacaranda Health’s model, it strengthens what already exists, making the entire system more reliable and responsive.

Real Impact You Can See Across Facilities and Communities

Jacaranda Health’s success is backed by measurable impact. Across Kenyan counties, their work has contributed to:

• Significant reductions in maternal and newborn complications
• Higher uptake of antenatal and postnatal care
• Better birth preparedness among mothers
• Improved emergency response by nurses and midwives
• Increased trust in public health facilities
• Better communication between mothers and providers

But perhaps the most meaningful impact is seen in individual stories, a mother who seeks care in time because PROMPTS flagged a danger sign; a nurse who saves a newborn because of MENTORS training; a family that feels safe walking into a facility that once overwhelmed them. These are real-world outcomes born from consistent, practical, and deeply thought-out innovation.

Scaling Across Kenya and Beyond

As demand for PROMPTS and MENTORS grows, Jacaranda Health continues to extend its footprint across Kenya. Their goal is not just to add more counties, but to strengthen and normalize maternal health systems so that high-quality care becomes the expectation, not the exception.

Their work is also gaining attention across Africa, where similar challenges exist. Countries exploring digital maternal health strategies are increasingly studying the Jacaranda model for its blend of simplicity, evidence-based design, and public-sector compatibility. With maternal and newborn health still ranking among Africa’s most urgent development priorities, Jacaranda Health’s approach stands out as a scalable solution capable of making long-term, sustainable change.

Why Jacaranda Health Matters in Africa’s Digital Health Future

In an era where digital health solutions often lean toward high-tech apps and complex platforms, Jacaranda Health represents a refreshing and effective alternative. Their model proves that innovation isn’t always about building something new, sometimes, it’s about using the right tools in the right way, strengthening what already exists, and designing systems that truly understand the people they serve.

By grounding innovation in empathy, practicality, and partnership, Jacaranda Health has become a leading voice in maternal health transformation across Africa, one SMS, one nurse, and one mother at a time.

About Jacaranda Health

Jacaranda Health is a Kenyan nonprofit dedicated to improving maternal and newborn health by strengthening public health systems through digital tools and frontline mentorship. Their core innovations, PROMPTS and MENTORS deliver personalized pregnancy support to mothers while equipping nurses and midwives with the skills to provide high-quality, respectful care.

Learn more at jacarandahealth.org
General Contact: [email protected]