Influence of Community Awareness Campaigns and Community Leaders' Engagement on Promoting Universal Birth and Death Registration in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya

Birth and death registration are essential to a functional civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system, providing legal identity and generating data for governance and planning. Devolved counties in Kenya's rural regions have rarely been examined on whether their community-led strategies, awareness creation and leadership mobilization, translate into measurable registration gains. This gap is notable in Elgeyo Marakwet County, where birth registration coverage stands at approximately 62 percent and death registration at about 25 percent, both below national and WHO benchmarks. This study examined the influence of community awareness campaigns and community leaders' engagement on universal birth and death registration in the county, guided by the Health Belief Model, Diffusion of Innovations Theory, and Community Participation Theory. It adopted a convergent parallel mixed-methods design. Quantitative data came from 392 household heads sampled through a multistage procedure across Keiyo North and Keiyo South sub-counties, while qualitative data were drawn from 12 purposively sampled key informants. Quantitative data were analyses using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression; qualitative data were analyzed thematically. Descriptive results showed positive perceptions of both community awareness campaigns (M = 4.12, SD = 0.924) and community leaders' engagement (M = 4.24, SD = 0.830). Both variables correlated significantly with universal registration (r = .339 and r = .265, p < .01). In the regression model, community awareness campaigns remained a significant independent predictor (β = .229, p < .001), while community leaders' engagement lost independent significance once other interventions were controlled for (β = .002, p = .976). Qualitative findings showed leaders' authority reinforced, rather than independently drove, awareness and outreach. The study concludes that awareness creation is a primary, independent driver of registration behaviour, while leaders' engagement operates mainly through awareness. It recommends institutionalizing multi-channel awareness programmes and embedding leader-led registration drives within existing administrative structures.

community awareness campaigns, community leaders' engagement, civil registration, birth registration, death registration

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