GHWP SG 60 · UK–Africa Health Summit, 19 March 2025

Health Workforce Wellbeing Interventions and Initiatives Study in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana

A cross-sectional survey of 4,040 health workers in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, scored on the seven-item Wellbeing Index, found low wellbeing across every country and every domain measured — alongside qualitative evidence from a Kenyan palliative-care partnership that training with an embedded wellbeing module can shift it.

Source: Health Workforce Wellbeing Interventions and Initiatives Study in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana — a mixed methods study (GHWP SG 60). Fieldwork December 2024 – January 2025. Interim findings.
WBI-7 · Dec 2024 – Jan 2025

Wellbeing concerns across three countries

% of health workers reporting
High burden

The three partners

Each country sized and shaded by composite wellbeing burden. Click one to pull it to the centre — the other two move out to the edges and the whole row follows.

Wellbeing Index, all seven domains

Share of health workers reporting each concern, by country. Domains ordered by three-country average. Use the country selector above to isolate a single country.

Domains ranked by burden

Three-country average of the seven WBI domains (%). Every domain sits above 60 in every country.

Composite burden by country

Unweighted mean of the seven domain scores — a summary derived here, not reported in the source.
No per-country sample sizes are published, so these means cannot be weighted or tested against one another. Read the ordering, not the gap.
Case study 1 · Kenya

Hi-Five: palliative care capacity with wellbeing built in

Single-arm, no comparison group

The 5 × 5 × 5 training cascade

Partners: Kenya Hospice Palliative Care Association, St Christopher's Hospice, World Hospice Palliative Care Alliance. Each stage multiplies rather than filters, so counts rise down the chain.
Context: capacity to run professional-level palliative care training inside Kenyan counties is limited, especially for mid-level cadres. The intervention trains a small group of nurses and clinical officers, embeds a health-worker wellbeing module in that training, then mentors each trainee to cascade it onward.
Focus group discussions

Where trainees said wellbeing shifted

What the case study can and cannot show

Reading the Hi-Five evidence honestly.
ShowsThat a wellbeing module can be delivered inside existing clinical training at low marginal cost, and that trainees attribute changes in confidence, satisfaction and peer support to it.
Cannot showEffect size. The outcomes are activity counts and self-report with no comparison group and no pre/post WBI-7 score, so the quotes illustrate mechanism rather than measure impact.
Next testRe-administering WBI-7 to cascade participants would connect the two halves of this study — the survey establishes the baseline, the case study currently sits beside it rather than on it.

Cascade efficiency

Reach per health worker initially enrolled.
Ratios computed from the four reported stage counts. The 21× patient multiplier is the headline argument for the cascade design; the 90% mentorship take-up is the quieter one.
Study design

How the evidence was produced

4,040
Quantitative arm

Cross-sectional online survey of health workers in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, December 2024 to January 2025, scored on the seven-item Wellbeing Index. Objective: describe the magnitude and nature of wellbeing concerns in the workforce.

Case studies
Qualitative arm

Selected Global Health Workforce Programme projects in the three countries, explored through focus group discussions with participants. Objective: understand the impact of successful wellbeing interventions on the workforce. Kenya is complete; Nigeria and Ghana are still in collection.

Partnership
Who ran it

Funded by Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET) through the Global Health Workforce Programme. Delivered by the Institute of Applied Studies and Research, the Nigerian Medical Association and the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association.

Full WBI-7 results

% of health workers reporting each concern. Mean is the unweighted three-country average.
WBI-7 domainGhanaKenyaNigeriaMean
Composite (mean of 7 domains)72.169.378.473.3

Outstanding work

Next steps as stated by the study team at the summit.
RunningComplete on-going qualitative data collection for the case studies in Nigeria and Ghana.
QueuedFinalise analysis of qualitative data for the multi-country case studies.
QueuedStudy reporting and manuscript writing.
Caveats carried into this dashboard
1No country denominators. Only the 4,040 total is published, so country percentages cannot be weighted or significance-tested. All country comparisons here are descriptive.
2One internal discrepancy. The source states at least 50% reported concerns on 6 of 7 domains; the underlying chart values put all 7 domains above 60% in all three countries. The KPI quotes the source; the chart plots the data.
3Composite is derived. The 72.1 / 69.3 / 78.4 means are calculated here as a plain average of the seven items — the source publishes no WBI-7 scoring weights.
Acknowledgement

Study team

Oluga O, Ibekwe T, Ofori-Amfopo P, Boi D, Sopaal A, Quadri OR, Kyei J, Obengo A, Ayieko P. Institute of Applied Studies and Research — Esther Nambuye, Venia Ogango, Lavin Odhiambo, Leaky Mando. With the Nigerian Medical Association, the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association and Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET). Related grants: GHWP SG 24, SG 41 and LG 07.