Rita Mwachandi – A Driving Force in the Health Care Ecosystem

When your father works as a hospital superintendent and specializes in paediatrics, your family is bound to move around a lot. Or at least, this was how things were back in the day when Rita Mwachandi was younger. While she was in primary school, her family moved from Nyeri to Gatundu, and shortly after, in 1983, to Nairobi when her father was posted at Kenyatta National Hospital.

Rita and her brothers were naturally drawn to their father, after all, it was because of him that they got to live in new places. When relatives visited, there was always an uncle or an aunt that would bless Rita and her brothers with a prophecy that one or all of them would follow in their father’s line of work. They received these words but Rita knew for a fact that being at the frontline of health: working as a doctor or a nurse, was not the route she intended to take.

She completed her primary education and proceeded to St. Mary’s Girls’ High School in the beautiful highlands of Meru. However, boarding was new territory and unlike most girls in her class, Rita didn’t enjoy the time away from home. On closing days, she was the girl that cleared out her cube – no trace of her in the school over the holidays. But when it was time to go back, she had limited choices. She kept her enthusiasm alive by joining all the school clubs, and in doing so, she found her passion for communication from her role in the drama club. By her final year of school she knew for certain that she wanted to pursue a career in communication.
Then came that long wait for the KCSE results. Rita wasn’t one to waste her days at home. Her father had (by then) opened a clinic at Town House in the Nairobi CBD and she got her entry level work experience by working as his receptionist. The uncles and aunts’ prophecies from earlier rang in her ear; she was technically working in a health facility – but her heart still craved the world of communication.

In 1993, Rita joined Daystar University to study Public Relations. When she graduated in 1997, she was drawn towards a career in marketing communications. A job opening for a Client Service Executive at Steadman & Associates piqued her interest. It was an entry to mid-level experience position and Rita applied and got her first job out of college. She was open minded to the opportunities and lessons that came her way, and as her understanding of the practicality of marketing began to hold, she progressed in her role. After four years here, she moved to Safaricom. She started out in the company’s customer service department where communication was part and parcel of her job. By 2005 Rita had been at Safaricom for four years. The company was introducing a mobile banking platform called MPESA and Rita transitioned into a role within the MPESA marketing team. Her team was constantly on the ground, marketing the product to its target audience – those that weren’t part of the formal banking sector. Ultimately, when MPESA came to life, she was glad to have been a contributor to its development and the public’s knowledge of it. She grew her skills in this role for six years before she made another job transition.

After ten dedicated years at Safaricom, Rita craved a new environment where she could utilize her strengths further. She responded to an ad by Population Services Kenya. They were looking for an experienced Marketing Manager for a reproductive health program they were rolling out. Rita applied for the job because she knew it was another chance to work in communication. It didn’t occur to her that she was applying to work in the health industry.

The working style here was very different. Previously, she’d been used to private commercial work and now she was stepping into development work which entailed working closely with the government. Because the industry and working style was different from what she was used to, she took time to learn about the health industry and the process of rolling out health programs. Rita was on the ground understanding the needs of the clients PSI targeted and assuring them that their services were beneficial to them.

Within a year, Rita’s role had evolved. She had taken on the responsibility of working with healthcare providers who own and manage small and middle-level health facilities that serve low income and under-served communities. Her role was to professionalize their health businesses. The aim was to ensure these small health facilities continued to run sustainably and eventually, grow while continuing to serve the community. The teamwork yielded exceptional results such as opening up the health sector to the banking sector. As part of improving the healthcare system, Rita also started overseeing the demand-side financing work at PS Kenya that strived towards ensuring that low-income populations had continuous access to social insurance. In 2016, she achieved one of her greatest feats when she worked with NHIF to rebrand their Supa Cover health scheme and increase enrollment to the scheme through marketing and customer education.

Since then, Rita has continued to embrace her role and has learned – as have we – that when it comes to health work, one doesn’t have to be at the front-line to be considered valuable. Rather the health care ecosystem consists of many other people who ensure that structures are in place.

Rita we thank you for chasing happiness, for your open-mindedness that has seen you integrate communication and health work, and for your good work at Population Services Kenya.

#KeHealthWorkers