Small Clinic, Big Impact: The Leo Project
The Leo Project is a fixture of support in the Nanyuki, Kenya community. With the addition of the Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic, this support will now include comprehensive healthcare.
On September 9th, The Leo Project officially broke ground on the Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Center in Nanyuki, Kenya. While the planning, design, and ground-breaking of this project was completed within 2021, the inspiration for this clinic began in another hospital, over 7,00 miles away and much earlier. In 2018, Jess Danforth founded The Leo Project in remembrance of her best friend Caitlin, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 33. At the time, Jess and Caitlin were experiencing simultaneous health problems. As Jess recalls, “I always told Caitlin that if something happened, I would start something in her honor. It was kind of like a pact we made.” She tells the founding story lovingly and excitedly details the many programs at the Leo Project.
The Leo Project is a community-based organization that provides supportive services, creative outlets, and opportunities not traditionally available to youth and adults in the Nanyuki community. Since its founding, these services have entailed everything from children’s music classes, to adolescent sexual education, and adult literacy programs hosted in their 6,000 square foot resource center. Resources provided by The Leo Project are free and available to everyone in the community. Currently, The Leo Project educates 2,432 children and 2,297 adults across Nanyuki.
With the emergence of COVID-19, the center pivoted to also provide emergency relief services. As the need for accessible, comprehensive community healthcare services became abundantly clear, a new branch of The Leo Project was born: The Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic.
As with most programs The Leo Project offers, the genesis for the community health center was a result of several interviews with local community members. “During COVID, we ended up doing an extensive needs assessment. Our team was in the field a lot, meeting with community members, seeing what we could do to intervene and help. And it turns out that there is just an incredible shortage of access to care, particularly for mothers and children.”
Jess and her team have been working with BHI Senior Architects, Jay Verspyk and Gerard Georges, to bring the health center to life. Together, BHI and The Leo Project are partnering with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, community chiefs and healers, and a Kenyan construction contractor to ensure the project is sustainable and empowers the community holistically. It is projected that the clinic will see 15,000 patients in its first year. Additionally, the space will support the Kenyan community health worker (CHW) program for the Laikipia County which currently has 1,200 CHWs.
Compared to other projects that BHI has previously worked on such as Haiti’s National teaching hospital, the Hôpital Universitaire des Mirebalais, or Sierra Leone’s forthcoming Maternal Center of Excellence, The Leo Project represents a smaller-scale, community-based facility in BHI’s project portfolio. Yet, as BHI has seen first hand in over a decade of experience, community health clinics and CHWs are vital to supporting health in rural areas such as Nanyuki and ensuring that care can reach patients where they are. The Leo Project exemplifies a core belief of BHI: to empower all levels of healthcare delivery to ensure full health equity for everyone, everywhere.
Jay echoes the importance of the small yet careful design of the Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic. He says that he and his team designed it with a hopeful expansion in mind, stating, “this is the kernel of something that’s going to grow into something much bigger.”
While the clinic will be based in Nanyuki, the reach will expand much farther. Jay hopes it can serve as a model for preventative care clinics across rural Kenya. “Clinics like The Leo Project are equally as important in the ecosystem of healthcare delivery as large hospitals that address acute conditions”, shares Jay.
As construction of The Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic commences, with hopes of a grand opening in early 2022, BHI, The Leo Project, and the community of Nanyuki look towards a future with greater access to dignified care for women, children, and rural populations — at all levels of health.
Cecilia Needham is a Development and Communications Intern at Build Health International. She is a senior at Middlebury College pursuing a passion for global health equity and healthcare as a human right.
