1-Minute Video On How an External Evaluation Shows the Impact of Kupenda’s Disability Trainings for Traditional Healers

by Kupenda

A group of Kenyan adults sitting inside a tent, holding pens and paper

In January of 2020, Dr. Kathryn Quissell from the University of Virginia’s Department of Public Health Sciences visited Kupenda’s field office in Kenya to set up her research study on the effectiveness of our Disability Advocacy Training Program for Traditional Healers. During this visit she trained 7 interns and 5 staff members on research study best practices and data collection techniques. In February, after her departure, the trained field team then collected baseline survey data from a comparison and intervention group of healers (30 people in each group). The leadership team then ran our 8-hour Disability Advocacy Training workshop for only the intervention group and collected post-workshop data via a post-survey and monthly disability advocacy activity reports from the trained healers.

The general, initial analysis of the collected data showed that Kupenda’s training had a significant effect on many of the knowledge, attitude, behavior outcome measurements. In particular, the traditional healers attending the training were significantly more likely than the traditional healers in the comparison group to:

  • reject negative stereotypes about disability;
  • view children with disabilities as deserving of education, healthcare, and community support;
  • want to treat people with disabilities like other people in access to food, education, healthcare, and employment;
  • express acceptance of people with disabilities as similar to themselves in many important ways;
  • be better able to identify the medical causes of disability; and
  • to know that children with disabilities should be enrolled in school and treated in medical facilities rather than in the community.

These significant changes were also confirmed in comparing the pre-test to the post-test data of the training attendees.

These findings as well as those from our internal program evaluation, suggest that Kupenda’s training model can have a substantive impact on core beliefs surrounding disability.

Enjoy this 1-minute video summary of the findings:


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2 thoughts on “1-Minute Video On How an External Evaluation Shows the Impact of Kupenda’s Disability Trainings for Traditional Healers

John Williamson

If a report on the evaluation become available, I would be interested in receiving a copy.

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