The effects of health insurance coverage on antenatal care use in Migori County, Kenya

The current thesis aims to investigate the association between health insurance coverage and antenatal care utilization in Migori County, a north-western Kenyan county. Antenatal care (ANC) is defined as the healthcare services provided to pregnant women from the time of conception to the moment of birth, and it plays a vital role in monitoring the progress of the pregnancy. However, there are significant gaps that still exist in the usage and access to antenatal care, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence suggest that health insurance coverage could have an effective impact on antenatal healthcare use, however, there are few studies which examine the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa, even fewer when considering the Kenya situation and the specific area of Migori County. This gap in the literature must be filled not only to raise awareness regards Kenyan context, but also to generate a more thorough comprehension of how to improve health policies, in relation to population needs and inequalities, in order to enhance maternal healthcare services utilization and achieve the more general and global goal of universal health coverage To compute our findings, we rely on secondary data from the study protocol yield in Population-based Socioeconomic Household Assessment of Livelihoods and Health Among Communities in Migori County, Kenya, a repeated cross-sectional survey study led by Starnes and colleagues over multiple timepoints, considering data carried out in 2018 and 2021. We are interested in understanding the antenatal care frequency and timing by Kenyan women when insured and uninsured, and how that changes over time, and the change in antenatal care utilisation by wealth status in Migori County, Kenya.