Exploring the impact of large-scale planetary health challenges on positive community health in Kenya

In Kenya we are co-leading a research project to enhance community resourcefulness andto define community positive health and the systems of resources that support this. Through a multi-site research project, we worked with different groups of community members across three diverse field sites in Baringo, Siaya, and Nakuru counties. We used a systems thinking approach and a mixture of qualitative (78 focus discussion groups), participatory (67 activities, such as cognitive mapping, community timelines, tree diagrams, patient journeys, and walking interviews). Preliminary research findings identified the building blocks of community positive health and how communities leveraged these building blocks into a functioning community-level system. Community positive health, community identity and vision were described as strictly interdependent with a complex network of natural resources and affected by their depletion. These preliminary results show that large-scale planetary health challenges reach small-scale community systems of positive health. Communities provided information-rich insights on how their systems of positive health have become steadily impacted over recent decades by local environmental and climate changes. Planetary health concepts and challenges shape community positive health, identity and vision, by limiting the availability and agency over natural resources. Findings will be refined in a further stage of research to co-produce a pilot-tested, validated toolkit to enable resourcefulness-based approaches to community planetary health.