The Africa Consortium for Quality Improvement Research (ACQUIRE) in Frontline Healthcare.

Excellence In Frontline Healthcare

THE JULY 2025 ACQUIRE QUALITY IMPROVEMENT LEADERSHIP FORUM

Co-Producing Safer Care: Centering Quality and Kindness from the Start

Thursday 10 – Friday, 11 July 2025

Movenpick Hotel, Nairobi AND Online Via Zoom

"Healthcare without quality is ineffective, wasteful, and hampers progress towards improved health outcomes"

Lancet Commission Report, 2019

Why Focus on the
Frontline?

The frontline healthcare worker is the only actor who knows what is really happening with the patient.

The frontline perspective is where the action happens. The health worker is the driver of systems thinking for contextually relevant, quality improvement in outcomes and patient-centered care.

Frontline health worker quality improvement happens when peers are working in cross-disciplinary teams, looking at real-time data, testing change ideas and creating feedback loops while co-producing new knowledge.

Working at the frontline democratises the health workers agency for change; it’s a bottom-up organic initiative versus top-down, siloed responses.

Why Do QI Our Way?

Frontline-led QI is a paradigm shift. We know what to do, but we don’t know how to do it consistently, excellently and at scale.

QI is the engine that drives SSA towards an implementation science strategy of change at the granular, frontline level where it meets the patients’ needs in real-time.

QI is implementation science leveraging evidence-based practice. At the center are feedback loops that allow for real time learning, accountability and measurable change – where data drives decision making at the frontline.

Key Patient Safety Facts by WHO

Around 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care and more than 3 million deaths occur annually due to unsafe care. In low-to-middle-income countries, as many as 4 in 100 people die from unsafe care. 

Above 50% of harm (1 in every 20 patients) is preventable; half of this harm is attributed to medications. 

Some estimates suggest that as many as 4 in 10 patients are harmed in primary and ambulatory settings, while up to 80% (23.6–85%) of this harm can be avoided.

Why is Addressing
Quality in Healthcare so Important?

Three in every five preventable deaths are due to poor quality of care at health facilities in low-and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. When a surgery leads to infection, antibiotics are overprescribed, or diabetic drugs are not used at the proper dose, and patients suffer. 

Weak systems and processes are at fault in many of these healthcare institutions rather than the absence of trained healthcare workers, guidelines, and policies. 

Building systems that efficiently and effectively deliver quality care is possible, but it must start at the frontline giving healthcare workers training in the science of quality improvement so that they can drive positive system changes right, where it matters most, at the bedside of the patient.

Three in every five preventable deaths are due to poor quality of care at health facilities in low-and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. When a surgery leads to infection, antibiotics are overprescribed, or diabetic drugs are not used at the proper dose, and patients suffer. 

Weak systems and processes are at fault in many of these healthcare institutions rather than the absence of trained healthcare workers, guidelines, and policies. 

Building systems that efficiently and effectively deliver quality care is possible, but it must start at the frontline giving healthcare workers training in the science of quality improvement so that they can drive positive system changes right, where it matters most, at the bedside of the patient.

The ACQUIRE QI Leadership Forum

Building Quality Improvement Into Africa's Health System Agenda

DATE/TIME: July 18 to 19, 2024  9 am-4 pm | Nairobi, Kenya

Conference Sessions Insights​

Activities

The ACQUIRE QI Leadership Forum
Building Quality Improvement into Africa’s Health System Agenda

Q.I Storytelling Contest

Tell your Quality Improvement story.

Webinars

ACQUIRE celebrated frontline healthcare champions in Sub-Saharan Africa, showing their dedication to transformative quality improvement during a webinar that inspired the entire healthcare community.

Newsroom

Read our latest articles touching the health sector.

Graduation

Latest graduation news.

Insights & Articles

How QI Training is Transforming Patient Care in Nyandarua

The journey began with a two-day, in-person QI training where participants were introduced to the science and methods of Quality Improvement, an entirely new concept for most. This was the ignition point that sparked curiosity and opened minds to the possibility of doing things differently. This is how healthcare workers in Nyandarua were empowered and drove change right at the frontline re)

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Congratulations to the 2025 ACQUIRE Experiential Leadership Cohorts

At 5:00 a.m., in the quiet corridors of a Level 5 hospital in Mbagathi Hospital in Nairobi, a nurse on duty scans the surgical prep board and pauses for a minute. The patient schedule at the facility is tight, and the staff is lean. She wonders aloud. There is so much to do, so much that needs to change, but I don’t know how to make a difference. What if she and others like her had the training they needed at the frontline to drive quality improvement processes right where they worked?

Read More »
Since 2020, ACQUIRE has conducted implementation research to guide healthcare workers in enhancing the quality of care across the African continent.

Our Big Idea

ACQUIRE seeks to build learning health systems that ensure high-quality healthcare for everyone in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our Vision

Healthcare systems are characterized by continuous learning that results in quality care for all.

Our Mission

To strengthen the capacity of frontline healthcare workers, institutions, and governments to apply rigorously-performed, quality improvement research to everyday practice in Sub-Saharan Africa.