Abstracts submission ended on 31st March, 2016.

Fourth AfHEA Scientific Conference to be held in Rabat, Morocco, from 26 to 29 September 2016

We call on all African health economists and health policy analysts, as well as all those working on research of relevance to African health financing, economics and policy to submit abstracts for the Fourth Conference of the African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA). The conference will be held in Rabat, Morocco, from 26 to 29 September 2016.

The overall theme of this conference is “The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Grand Convergence and Health in Africa”.

This theme recognizes the new international health economics and policy landscape with the end of the MDGs and the adoption in September 2015 of the successor SDG global initiative. It seeks to provide an African perspective and analysis of this emerging landscape and agenda. AfHEA will publish a policy paper on this new agenda and the perspectives after the conference.

Researchers, practitioners, policy experts and other actors are encouraged to submit abstracts on this broad theme or indeed on any other interesting, innovative or topical African health economics, systems and policy research which, upon selection by our scientific committee, may be presented orally or in poster format at the conference.
Proposals for organized sessions are also invited from interested individuals or institutions. An organized session must have a session organizer, who will describe the overall session in the session abstract, and a maximum of five individual abstracts describing the individual presentations of the session, all as per the organized session structure described further below.
Abstracts may be submitted in English or French and must be structured as follows:

Structure of individual abstracts (for organized session structure, see further below)

• Title of paper
• Name, institutional affiliation, phone number and e-mail address of presenting author
• Names of co-authors
• 400-word maximum structured abstract, which indicates the aim and objectives of the research, the methods used, the key findings and the main conclusion(s).

Authors should submit individual abstracts online at …. no later than 28 February 2016.

Structure of proposals for organized sessions

• Title of organized session
• Principle organizer (Name, institutional affiliation, phone number and email address)
• Co-organizers (Names, institutional affiliations and email addresses)
• Session abstract (max 400 words): provides a summary of the session
• Abstract of each paper (max 400 words): should include the aims and objectives of the paper and the key findings. The maximum number of papers allowed for each session is 5

The proposals for organized sessions should be submitted online at ….. The deadline for submission of proposals for organized sessions is 31 March 2016.

Note that there are different online submission forms for individual and organized session abstracts and the correct form must be used. All abstracts submitted will be reviewed by the Scientific Committee.

The abstract submissions received for the conference (individual and organized session) will inform the organization of the parallel sessions and AfHEA reserves the right to determine the technical composition of those sessions. To maintain the high standards of previous conferences, the review process for the abstract submissions is intensive and thorough. Thereafter acceptance of abstracts for oral presentations, posters and organized sessions will be confirmed with applicants no later than 30 April 2016.

The following sub-themes should be seen as guidelines for the scientific direction of the conference, and will inform some plenary and other sessions, but are not meant to restrict authors in their choice of subjects or themes for their abstracts.

Theme 1: The unfinished MDGs agenda and the new SDGs, including, for example, how experience of working towards the MDGs informed SDG approaches; relevance of the SDGs and Grand Convergence for Africa; to what extent did African priorities and concerns inform the SDGs/Grand Convergence; and, how realistic are the new goals and targets.

Theme 2: Financing the SDGs and the Grand Convergence (GC), including, for example resource mobilization (such as expansion of fiscal space, the decline in overseas development assistance (ODA), the growing emphasis on domestic resource mobilization and the possible impact of the principle of universality of SDGs irrespective of a country’s income level, pooling and allocation, strategic purchasing; results based financing, as well as financing strategies to reduce inequity and to increase financial risk protection in the informal sector.

Theme 3: Policies and reforms for improving health system performance, required to move towards the SDGs and the grand convergence, ranging from, for example, strategies to improve governance, leadership and financial and other management strategies;

Theme 4: Priority setting and economic evaluation including the use of economic evaluations for priority setting and decision-making, support for multi-country decision-making mechanisms through to the case for prioritizing RMNCH services in global, regional and country health programmes.

Theme 5: Human Resources for Health (HRH), including, for example, production and distribution of personnel; costs of production of personnel; remuneration practices, incentives and impacts on productivity; efficiency of HRH, health worker motivation; and, financing on-going training.

Theme 6: Key methodological changes in health economics and policy analysis specific to Africa including data accessibility challenges, economic modeling for complex systems, policymaker demand for and use of economic and policy analyses.

Theme 7: The role of research institutions and donors in building capacity in health economics, including for example, advocacy for broader consideration of economic principles by policymakers, skills required for economic assessments in Africa, gaps not addressed by current university programs, and the importance of collaboration for skills sharing.

As a reminder, all abstracts submitted will be reviewed by the AfHEA conference Scientific Committee, which includes representatives from a wide range of African countries and is co-chaired by Dr. Djesika Amendah (of the African Population and Health Research Centre, Nairobi) and Prof. Obinna Onwujekwe (of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka).