The HKN is modeled after a door-to-door and sales approach, in which a neighborhood woman becomes the local sales representative, or a HealthKeeper, for a line of health products and services. The HealthKeepers go the last mile - right to the door step - to sell the basic health-promoting products in their communities, right from a basket on their heads. As the franchisor, the HKN provides the franchisees (HealthKeepers) with training on how to manage simple ailments of common occurrence, sales, health promotion, and health products among others.
The mix of products sold directly address common but deadly health problems while also building a revenue source for the women. The products sold by the franchisees include a mix of high impact, reasonably priced health-promoting products, such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria, oral rehydration salts to protect infants and children from diarrhea-related death, home water-treatment tablets to ensure a safe water supply, contraceptives to enable family planning and other carefully selected services and personal care products which enhance or beef up incomes of the
HealthKeepers was first a pilot by Freedom from Hunger, but is now an independent entity.