An Evaluation of the Capacity of the Kisiizi Hospital Health Insurance Scheme to Provide Health Education to Member Population

Abstract

Background: Gaps in health care financing and absent risk coping strategies have led to an influx of new community health insurance (CHI) schemes in developing countries. These CHI programs have reduced the burden of health care cost, but have achieved variable levels of success in improving the health outcomes of member populations. Kisiizi Hospital (KH) has an existing CHI, the KH Health Insurance Scheme (KHHIS). KH administration seeks to modify the scheme to better respond to patient needs and improve health outcomes for patients through increasing patient knowledge. This study was conducted to determine if community leaders in the KHHIS catchment area could effectively educate the KHHIS member population on topics presented at a KHHIS health promotion workshop. Methods: This study was a prospective quasi-experimental study. The intervention included training of community leaders on selected health topics during a one-day workshop. A proportion of the community leaders were instructed to educate members of their village. To assess the success of this intervention we performed a community-level knowledge assessment to measure the ability of leaders to pass on health information. The training workshop included 72 village chairpersons and the community survey included 5 engozis (villages) as a training group and 6 engozis as a comparison group. Two sample t-tests were performed to determine whether the training increased the health knowledge of members. Results: There was a 0.37 mean score increase observed in the training group and a 0.53 mean score increase observed in the comparison group; but the results were not statistically significant. Discussion: Utilizing trained community leaders to educate KHHIS members did not result in a significant knowledge change among the member population. We recommend modifications to future iterations of this health education program to increase the likelihood of success.