During my time in Kenya, I will engage in three main activities to strengthen feeding support for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDDs) in Kenya.
First, I will meet with medical professionals at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital to provide training on red flags to identify children with feeding difficulties and safe, effective feeding practices for children with NDDs.
Second, I will lead educational sessions for groups of parents and caregivers of children with NDDs, focusing on functional feeding difficulties. These sessions will offer culturally appropriate, practical strategies that families can use at home to promote safe and successful feeding.
Third, I will visit the Precious Kids Center in Kitale—a residential facility for children with NDDs to build a relationship with this organization. If appropriate, we aim to establsih a long term partnership where therapists and caregivers are able to be trained to conduct comprehensive feeding assessments, identify risk factors, and develop individualized support plans for resident children with one-on-one coaching will be provided to ensure strategies are implemented effectively.
This work will increase the knowledge, skills, and confidence of healthcare providers and caregivers, ultimately improving feeding safety, nutritional outcomes, and quality of life for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.
This project serves children with disabilites and feeding difficulty and their familie.
These groups are often underserved and face significant barriers to accessing specialized feeding support and developmental care. In Kenya, trained therapists and autism-specific resources are scarce, especially outside of major cities. Caregivers may be forced to rely on informal networks and limited guidance, which leads to unsafe feeding practices or inadequate nutrition for children with complex needs.
By equipping caregivers at home and medical professionals with targeted, practical knowledge, this project addresses urgent gaps in care.
The expected impact includes improved caregiver and medical professionals confidence, better identification and management of feeding difficulties, and safer, more effective feeding practices for children with developmental disabilities. This initial trip will lay the foundation for scalable, sustainable models of feeding support in low-resource settings that will later be implemented through projects conducted within our greater Neurodevelopmental Disabilities research team in Kenya.
The original plan to support a group living setting for children with disabilities was delayed in order to participate in the remarkable achievement of my mentor—the groundbreaking ceremony for one of the first public neurodevelopment centers in the region. Instead of providing education at the group facility, I hosted an educational session for caregivers of children with disabilities. Thirty caregivers attended in person and ten joined online. We focused on strategies to support feeding in children with sensory differences to improve their eating and overall nutrition.
In addition, one of my mentors and I spent time lecturing visiting international medical students in Kenya on autism and ongoing research initiatives in western Kenya. The research initiatives discussed—as well as the development of feeding support programs in Kenya—will become part of the services offered through the new neurodevelopmental clinic, alongside caregiver-delivered mobile health support programs and other services for children with disabilities. I am grateful to have played a small role in supporting the neurodevelopmental clinic.
