Specialist mental health care is out of reach for most adolescents in western Kenya, while community health promoters, who work at the community level of the Kenyan health system, are already in regular contact with the families around them. CAMP, Building Capacity for Adolescent Mental Health through Empowering Community Health Promoters, equips those promoters to recognize and respond to adolescent mental health needs in their own communities.
What the formative work found
The project began with a qualitative investigation of what was needed, drawing on the perspectives of community leaders, the health and education sectors, faith leaders, and community health promoters themselves. Promoters are already encountering adolescent mental health concerns in the course of their work. Parents and adolescents bring worries to them directly, and they observe the inaccurate information, stigma, and reluctance to seek help that surround those concerns. They described a strong interest in taking on this role, along with a need for the skills and resources to assess, intervene, and refer effectively.
The curriculum
The priorities identified in that investigation are now shaping a brief, practical curriculum. It covers psychoeducation on adolescent mental health problems, brief screening tools, and referral pathways, paired with foundational counseling skills that include active listening, instilling hope, and talking sensitively with adolescents and parents about acting on a referral. Promoters learn to deliver very brief supportive interventions drawn from evidence-based approaches such as basic relaxation, behavioral activation, and problem-solving strategies, and to judge when, where, and how to refer.
What comes next
The curriculum will then be piloted, with knowledge and skills measured before and after training and with promoter feedback shaping revisions and plans for wider dissemination and research. The team will work in parallel with partners in the health and education sectors on how an approach of this kind could be built into policy, as a low-cost way to strengthen how community health promoters respond to the adolescent mental health needs they encounter.