African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine 2025 Special Collection: We invite you to submit

AOSIS calls on all authors to participate in the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine (PHCFM) 2025 special collection that will be published in the open-access scholarly journal. Submit your latest research for consideration, contribute to the open-access content available to everyone, and share your expertise with a wider audience.

Timelines:

• Submissions open: 01 July 2024
• Submissions deadline: 31 December 2024
• Expected publication date: Rolling publication, Special Collection to be published by 01 July 2025

We would be honoured to receive your positive reply and look forward to receiving your manuscript.

Advocacy for Family Medicine in Africa

In most countries in Africa the discipline of family medicine is relatively underdeveloped. Even in countries with well-established training programmes, such as South Africa and Nigeria, there is still a need to engage policymakers and stakeholders on the contribution of family physicians to district health services. Such entities include government, higher education, professional councils, medical disciplines, civil society, general public and bodies such as the World Health Organization.

Human resources for health policy needs to understand the roles of family physicians as specialists within the district health system. Such policy must also recommend the number of family physicians needed to contribute to the workforce in district health services. Policy on primary health care and district health services should accurately reflect the contribution of family physicians and their activities. Family physician posts need to be budgeted for and incorporated into planning at the provincial or state level. Registrar or training posts must also be planned and financed to enable a sufficient supply of family physicians. Districts need to employ family physicians, understand their roles, and integrate them into clinical teams.

In the private sector there may also be issues with recognizing the scope of practice and remunerating family physicians. Private healthcare organisations, regulatory bodies and medical insurance companies may all need to understand the roles of family physicians and adapt their policies and procedures accordingly.

There are countries that are just starting to train and provide family physicians for the health system (such as Zimbabwe and Zambia) and countries where training is established but deployment must still go to scale (such as Uganda and Kenya). There are also countries without any training programmes for family physicians (such as Benin) or only in the private sector (such as Tanzania). We also need to understand what has happened to the family physicians that are trained in different health systems.

The need for advocacy is present in almost every country, although the focus may differ depending on the developmental stage of family medicine. This special collection calls for short reports that describe experiences with advocating for family medicine and sharing lessons learnt on how to do this more effectively. Where evidence exists on the effectiveness or contribution of family medicine then advocacy may also involve science communication or knowledge translation. Reflections on how family physician graduates have been utilized within the health system may also be included.

We therefore call for short reports on family medicine advocacy initiatives, science communication and knowledge translation. How have we engaged with policymakers and other stakeholders and more importantly what lessons can be learnt and shared with others on how to do this more effectively?

Objective:

Report on lessons learnt with advocating for family medicine in the African context

Recommended topics:

1. Approach to advocating with policymakers or stakeholders and lessons learnt e.g. government, higher education, professional councils, medical disciplines, civil society, general public.
2. Approach to sharing evidence though science communication or knowledge translation and lessons learnt.
3. Reflections on human resources for health policy and the inclusion of family physicians in health systems

Manuscript information:

Manuscript contributions may consist of the following:

• Manuscript submissions should be in English.
• Short Report articles must fully comply with the PHCFM guidelines for manuscripts (maximum 1500 words, 20 or fewer references with limited self-referencing; no more than 1 table/Figures).

Interested authors must consult the journal’s guidelines for manuscript submissions at phcfm.org.

Submission procedure:

To submit your article to the PHCFM, go to phcfm.org. When you submit the article, select the special collection “Short reports on advocacy for family medicine in Africa” as the article type. The submission portal will be accessible on phcfm.org after login in with your personal user credentials. For more details on the submission procedure go to submission procedure. All submissions will undergo anonymous review to guarantee high scientific quality and relevance to the subject. The final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers and at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

Of course, we will be happy to provide you with any assistance during the submission and application process. Kindly enquire at submissions@phcfm.org.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

• Prof. Bob Mash (Stellenbosch University) – rm@sun.ac.za

We would be honoured to receive your positive reply and look forward to receiving your article.