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The government of Kenya faces the dilemma of combating a growing burden of disease, regulating quality, and improving equity in health care distribution within the context of declining public financing that is forcing rationalisation of health service delivery. To help resolve the dilemma, Kenyan policymakers need a comprehensive understanding of the organisation and financing of the country’s health care system, including the expenditures on health care made by donors, public sector entities, and the private sector, particularly households. In terms of the overall health resource envelope, Kenya spends 5.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health; this is comparable to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which average 5.7%, but well below the high-income OECD countries’ average of 9.8%. The other major financiers of health care in Kenya were the donor community, which contribute 16% of total health expenditures, and employers, which contribute 3%. Households in the poorer income quintiles use less health care than do households in the richest quintile – more than a third of the poor who were ill did not seek care compared to only 15% of the rich. This suggests that inability to pay is contributing to lower utilisation rates by the poor. NHA findings reveal a need to address the issue of equity in health care resource allocation. To this end, the government is using NHA findings to inform its resource allocation formulas for the development of the social health insurance plan and community-based health insurance schemes, and the distribution of Ministry of Health funds among public facilities. The ministry also plans to use the findings to carry out further analysis into the efficiency of hospital-based service delivery by more closely monitoring the consumption of resources against production of outputs.