What JICHEKI is
JICHEKI (Jisikie Huru, Eleza Changamoto Kwangu Iwe) is a Tanzania-developed counselling approach that trains providers to surface intimate partner violence, mental distress, and substance use risk during routine HIV service contacts. It is a structured prompt set, a non-judgmental script, and a referral pathway, packaged for use by general health workers.
EpiC rolled out JICHEKI in 2023 across all six councils, with 140 health workers trained — 84 facility-based and 56 community-based.
What the training delivered
Training was a four-day blended programme combining didactic content, role-play, and supervised live counselling. Competency assessments at training close averaged 86 percent, with weakest scores on substance-use brief intervention — a finding that has informed the design of the follow-up booster session.
Twenty-eight live JICHEKI counselling sessions were demonstrated during the training period, with consent, and reviewed in supervised debriefs.
What providers report
Provider feedback is consistent: JICHEKI gives them permission to ask questions they always wanted to ask but feared opening. The disclosure rate of intimate partner violence in HIV counselling contacts rose from 4 percent at baseline to 17 percent in the first quarter post-training — almost certainly closer to true prevalence.
The JICHEKI approach equips providers to surface risk in conversations that previously stayed silent.