Our Recommendation
We highly recommend supporting Living Goods because they consistently measure appropriate outcomes to understand if their work is successful. This page on their website describes the behavior change results that they are seeing.
Living Goods meets the requirements for 4 of our 4 key criteria:
✔ Understand the Social Issue
✔ Ultimate Outcome Goals (Life Changes)
✔ Evidence of Success
✔ Counterfactual Impact
Their Vision
They envision a world where every family can easily access the healthcare they need to survive and thrive. Living Goods saves lives at scale by supporting digitally enabled community health workers (CHWs) who deliver care on call, making it easy for families to get the care they need. They work with governments and partners to support digitally empowered community health workers to deliver life-saving care to people’s doorsteps.
The Problem
In Sub-Saharan Africa, millions of families lack reliable access to quality primary healthcare. In rural and underserved areas, preventable illnesses like malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia remain leading causes of child mortality. Community Health Workers (CHWs) are often the first—and only—line of care, but many operate without proper training, tools, or compensation. Digital infrastructure is limited, health system funding is fragile, and governments face mounting pressure to do more with less.
Without a scalable, sustainable system for community health, families are left vulnerable to illness, and progress toward universal health coverage remains out of reach.
The Solution
Living Goods partners with governments to professionalize and scale digital, data-driven community health systems. Its approach supports CHWs to deliver care directly to families’ doorsteps, while ensuring government ownership and long-term sustainability.
Living Goods’ model is anchored in the DESC framework:
- Digitizing health delivery through real-time data platforms
- Equipping CHWs with training, diagnostics, and supplies
- Supervising field teams through performance reviews
- Compensating CHWs fairly for life-saving work
Key features of the model include:
- Implementation support to national and county governments in Kenya, Uganda, and Burkina Faso
- Integration with national digital health systems (e.g., eCHIS)
- Community-based family planning, maternal care, and child illness management
- Innovations like telemedicine, SMS reminders, and CHW performance dashboards
A Sample of Their Outputs
Living Goods rigorously tracks impact across its learning sites and government-led programs. In 2024 alone, CHWs supported by Living Goods achieved:
- 4.6 million people served, including 1.5 million children treated or referred
- 111,311 pregnancies registered and monitored
- $2.76 per capita cost, delivering high cost-effectiveness
A Sample of Their Outcomes
- 82% full immunization rate for children aged 9–23 months
- 60,905 unintended pregnancies averted
- 97% antenatal care coverage in Uganda
- 98% of births in health facilities in Vihiga County, Kenya
- Up to 90% facility delivery rates in learning sites like Busia and Kisumu
A Sample of Their Impacts
- A 2014 randomized controlled trial in Uganda showed that Living Goods-supported community health workers reduced under-5 mortality by 27% for less than $2 per person annually. (Reducing Child Mortality in the Last Mile)
- A 2025 independent study, now publicly available as a pre-print in the Lancet, tied Living Goods’ community health program in Uganda to a 28% reduction in child mortality. (Community Health Provision At Scale)
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