Public Health In Africa

07/12/2022

Research Integrity in Africa: Challenges, opportunities, and Recommendations.

Integrity and adherence to appropriate ethical standards are important elements of research. These standards are key to protecting research participants´ rights as well as ensuring the reliability and quality of research outputs. The just ended World Conference on Research Integrity in Cape Town South (May-June 2022) was a forum to reflect upon these issues. Building on the success story and work of the Africa research Integrity Network (ARIN), in this recent paper, we provide a critical reflection regarding the statusquo of research integrity in Sub - Saharan Africa. We highlight the rationale for ascertaining the differences and similarities between research ethics and research integrity. We end by making some recommendations on how research integrity can be fostered in the continent.

Integrity and adherence to appropriate ethical standards are important elements of research. These standards are key to protecting research participants´ rights as well as ensuring the reliability and quality of research outputs. Although empirical evidence is scanty, several authors have alluded t...

30/11/2022

"The goal of publishing rapidly is starting to conflict with the main purposes of research, i.e., provide meaningful and good quality evidence that advances science and supports public health action"

In his recent paper entitled: What does scientific publishing in public health mean?, Paolo Vineis, a research Professor at Imperial College London nicely articulates the challenges and opportunities in maintaining value and meaning in scientific publications, with a focus in public health and medicine. Read the full paper below (link).

Publishing a scientific journal like Frontiers in Public Health has become more and more challenging. There are at least three reasons for the difficulties we encounter as Editors. First, scientific publishing is related to careers in many countries of the world, i.e. there is a strong pressure for....

25/11/2022

Responsible task shifting and task sharing in health care delivery in Sub - Saharan Africa: when should we task shift/share?

The human resources in health deficit in the African continent mandates task shifting and sharing to be a priority action point on any rational health policy agenda. As one of the WHO building blocks for a strong health system (health workforce), task shifting/sharing has to be done in a responsible manner in order to protect patients from receiving sub - optimal care, and render the process sustainable. There is growing and compelling evidence, for instance, regarding the effectiveness of community health workers in delivering an array of health care services with great success. Key questions have to be answered:

1.What is responsible task shifting/sharing?
2. What are the barriers and facilitators to effective task shifting/sharing?
3. What are the success indicators of an effective task shifting/sharing initiative?
4. When should a service/intervention qualify to be task shifted/shared?

Myself and team Yankam BrendaCephas Ke-on AVOKAHubert Amu, PhDOluwafemi Adeagbo are currently reflecting upon these issues.

With a systematic review documenting empirical findings and conceptual/theoretical frameworks underway, we are inviting contributions from potential collaborators. If you are interested, please contact:

Yankam Brenda
Email: brenda.yankam@daad-alumni.de

23/11/2022

"Champions Corner"

To showcase the amazing work many Africans are doing within the public health space, Public Health in Africa will have as core mandate to make these champions known. We think this is going to increase knowledge sharing and networking among peers.

These stories shall cut across fields in public health: research, practice, advocacy, communication, program implementation, evaluation, governance, youth engagement, climate change and health etc.

Stay Tuned.

23/11/2022

INTRODUCTION: Meaningful community engagement is increasingly being considered the major determinant of successful research, innovation and intervention uptake. Even though there is available literature recommending community engagement in health research, there are still knowledge gaps in how commu...

23/11/2022

Engaging communities in research in Sub - Saharan Africa.

Meaningful community engagement is increasingly being considered the major determinant of successful research, innovation and intervention uptake. Even though there is available literature recommending community engagement in health research, there are still knowledge gaps in how communities might be best engaged in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thanks to a WHO-TDR grant, we report findings from a systematic review on current practices, barriers and facilitators, ethical considerations, and gender mainstreaming in the engagement of communities in research in sub-Saharan Africa.

We end by proposing a simplified framework that can guide researchers to effectively plan and engage communities in research.

Read the full systematic review by clicking on the link below:

INTRODUCTION: Meaningful community engagement is increasingly being considered the major determinant of successful research, innovation and intervention uptake. Even though there is available literature recommending community engagement in health research, there are still knowledge gaps in how commu...

22/11/2022

"Rural London is different from Rural Lagos"

In this recent essay entitled "There is an urgent need for a global rural health research agenda", we attempt to articulate the implications for researchers and policy makers if "rural health" is not well defined or understood. The disproportionately high all-cause mortality experienced by rural residents has been termed ‘the rural mortality penalty’. With over 90% of the world’s rural population living in Africa and Asia, we argue that the lack of an authoritative and respected global rural health research agenda contributes to increasing health inequalities, given that many of these people are receiving substandard care. There are differences in how rural and urban resident’s experience health care. Indeed, health policies stand the chance of unconsciously excluding the positive outcomes associated with rurality, as well as the rural experiences of health. We outline the most common definitions of ‘rural areas’ in the literature, as well as the shortcomings of these definitions.

We believe that articulating “rurality associated health advantages”, and how these could be enhanced will stand to benefit a huge portion of the world's population which is predominantly "rural". Systematically providing operational definitions for what authors describe as “rural” in the rural health research and policy literature is of utmost relevance You can read the full paper following by clicking on the link below:

People living in rural areas generally experience adverse health outcomes compared to their urban counterparts. They experience a greater burden of non-communicable diseases including: diabetes, hypertension, stroke, kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), have limited acce...

22/11/2022

Public Health In Africa, Puteaux, France. 19 likes · 26 talking about this. Global Health (Public Health), Health Systems, Primary Health Care, SDGs, Climate Change and Health.

22/11/2022

Maternal Mortality: Is the world doing enough?

The maternal mortality ratio (number of deaths per 100.000 live births) has generally been used as the litmus test of a health system. According to the state of the world population report of the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA (https://lnkd.in/esamvhea), in 2017, the maternal mortality ratios in the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway stood at 7, 4, 5, and 2 respectively. In Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Chad, the numbers were: 917, 1120, 1150, and 1140.
From a human rights and global health solidarity lenses, more investments from donors are required to deal with this concern. A few things are of relevance here:
1. Most of the countries with the highest MMR have serious humanitarian crises. We need innovative ways in improving maternal health in these settings. Research and evidence on how this should be done remains sparse.
2. It should be an eye sore when one goes through these numbers. More investments and global health solidarity is needed to address these inequities
3. Governments must assume their responsibilities in taking care of its populations. Increasing investments in health and research are a must if any tangible and sustainable changes are envisages. The Abuja and Algeers declarations on public investments in health and research respectively must be pulled out of the drawers and put to practice.
4. There is a core issue with the data. With most settings either having missing or incomplete data, it is difficult to track the main drivers of maternal deaths and address the causes of death appropriately.
5. The inconsistencies between country level data (e'.g, Data from Demographic and Health Surveys, DHS) and data from international bodies (like the data in this report) is an issue of concern. Researchers and policy makers are at times confused on which sources to use or trust. Reconciliation on this issue is of utmost relevance.
6. Responsible task shifting and task sharing remain key.
7. Innovation and use of technologies in improving maternal health are needed, but most importantly, have to be contextualized.
8. The communities, the communities, and the communities should be key players in the programme and research life cycles. Indeed, interventions to reduce maternal deaths must involve communities as the key players, and not as recipients,

For more information on public health news in Africa, follow us at:

https://lnkd.in/enzyDBpy

Public Health In Africa, Puteaux, France. 19 likes · 26 talking about this. Global Health (Public Health), Health Systems, Primary Health Care, SDGs, Climate Change and Health.

20/11/2022

INTRODUCTION: Recent efforts to bridge the evidence-policy gap in low-and middle-income countries has seen growing interest from key audiences such as government, civil society, international organizations, private sector players, academia, and media. One of such engagements was a two-day virtual pa...

20/11/2022

Bridging the evidence-policy gap in health related research: Lessons from Nigeria.

Simply producing rigorous and precise results about important problems is not enough to lead to a change in policy. A team of researchers led by Dr Ejemai Eboreime of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, in Canada report on strategies for improving evidence use in health policy in Nigeria. With over 630 participants from 13 countries attending a convening to this effect, poor collaboration between researchers and policymakers, poor community involvement in research and policy processes, poor funding for research, and inequalities are key factors inhibiting the use of evidence for policymaking in Nigeria.

Read the full paper recently published in the Pan African Medical Journal:

19/11/2022

Ijeoma Opara learnt some hard lessons after getting scooped in a grant application.

19/11/2022

Stealing Research Ideas is unethical:

Many Junior Scientists have been discouraged early on in their research careers because their research ideas were stolen by their supervisors or senior colleagues. Indeed, while trust remains an important ingredient for collegiality needed to advance team work and science,
some degree of rationality is important when it comes to sharing original research ideas. Assistant Professor Ijeoma Opara, PhD, of the Yale School of Public Health, nicely recounts her experience, and presents some tips of utmost relevance to young scientists in the career column of nature.

Ijeoma Opara learnt some hard lessons after getting scooped in a grant application.

17/11/2022

17/11/2022

Strengthened and Resilient Health Systems in Africa can only become reality if Africa-centric and driven agendas are put in place. Arming the future generation of African leaders through a "decolonized global health" lens is a must.

David McCoy, the Policy Lead at the United Nations University puts this across in a very nice way:

"This is why the ‘decolonising global health’ lens is useful, as it draws attention to the structures that reproduce inequity and encourages an understanding of how ideas and narratives are used to legitimise inequity. Raising questions about colonialism and coloniality in society (and in global health specifically) is inevitably sensitive, politically charged, contentious, and potentially risky".

1. Why should an international AIDS conference be organized in Australia or Canada where HIV prevalence rates almost never go above 1%? This is a clear case of exclusion of the beneficiary or end user in the discourse.
2. Why should global health institutes, centres of excellence, for TB, Malaria, HIV-AIDS be located in London or Boston?
It is insane to be thought what malaria is all about by someone who has rarely ever seen a case, nor treated one.

The hypocrisy of funding agencies and the big boys in perpetuating this colonial top down paradigm in agenda and priority setting, and decision making has to, and must stop.

We must decolonize global health practice and education:

17/11/2022

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PUBLIC HEALTH IN AFRICA 13-15 December 2022Kigali Convention CentreKigali, Rwanda HOME ABOUT CONFERENCE COMMITTEES MEDIA PROGRAMME TOOLKIT REGISTRATION Registration is Now Open CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Previous Next CONFERENCE TRACKS Track 1 Epidemiology, Diagnostics an...

17/11/2022

The Kigali Convention Centre Kigali, Rwanda will be host to one of the major public health events in Africa: the 2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PUBLIC HEALTH IN AFRICA from the 13th through the 15th of December, 2022. The CPHIA 2022 will provide a unique platform for African researchers, policymakers and stakeholders to come together and share perspectives and research findings in public health while ushering in a new era of strengthened scientific collaboration and innovation across the continent.
Details about the conference program and registration can be found at:

2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PUBLIC HEALTH IN AFRICA 13-15 December 2022Kigali Convention CentreKigali, Rwanda HOME ABOUT CONFERENCE COMMITTEES MEDIA PROGRAMME TOOLKIT REGISTRATION Registration is Now Open CLICK HERE TO REGISTER Previous Next CONFERENCE TRACKS Track 1 Epidemiology, Diagnostics an...