AfHEA 2022 Conference Announcement and Call for Abstracts

The African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA) is pleased to invite experts, analysts, practitioners and researchers in the relevant health fields to submit abstracts for the sixth Scientific Conference to be held in Kigali, Rwanda in March 2022. The exact dates will be announced in due course. 

Due to the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic, the conference will adopt a hybrid format where some delegates will be onsite in Kigali, and others will join virtually.

Theme and sub-themes

The broad theme of the conference is: Towards Resilient Health Systems in Africa: The Role of Health Economics and Policy Research.

The sub-themes of the conference are:

1. Decolonizing Health Economics and policy research and the drive for greater equity and inclusion.
2. Vaccine economics: equity, distribution, financing, trade and the lessons learnt during the covid-19 pandemic.
3. What adjustments are required to make health and health financing systems in Africa more resilient to pandemics?
4. Cost-effectiveness of addressing social/underlying determinants of poor health vs. funding medical interventions.
5. Building back better health systems: the role of innovation, multi-sectoral approaches and global financial architecture in building resilient health systems in Africa.
6. UHC, politics, policy processes, and reforms during covid-19 pandemic.
7. The role and use of data and evidence for policy decisions in a pandemic (the case of covid-19).
8. Looking to the future: what plans are in place to mitigate the impact of covid-19 post the pandemic?

Health Economics, Public Health and Health Policy researchers in particular are encouraged to submit abstracts on this broad theme and its sub-themes or indeed on any other interesting, innovative, or topical African health sector or systems research which upon selection by our scientific committee may be presented orally or in poster format at the conference.

Proposals for organised sessions

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, as per the organized session structure described further below.

Please note, however, that we do not accept proposals for plenary sessions.

Language and structure of abstracts

Abstracts may be submitted in English or French and must be structured as follows:

Structure of individual abstracts

• Title of paper
• Name, institutional affiliation, phone number and e-mail address of presenting author
• Names of co-authors
• 400-word maximum structured abstract in plain text or MS Word format (PDFs will be rejected), which indicates the background, aims and objectives of the research, the methods used, the key findings and the main conclusion(s). Abstracts submitted in MS Word must be in Times New Roman, font size 12.

Authors should submit individual abstracts online (the link will be provided in due course) no later than August 31, 2021.

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: 400-word maximum structured abstract in MS Word format (PDFs will be rejected) that provides a summary of the session
• Abstract of each paper (max 400 words in plain text or MS Word format): should include the aims and objectives of the paper and the key findings (do not include annexes). The maximum number of papers allowed for each session is 5. Abstracts submitted in MS Word must be in Times New Roman, font size 12.  

The proposals for organized sessions should be submitted online (the link will be provided in due course). The deadline for submission of proposals for organized sessions is October 31, 2021.

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.

Review process

To ensure a high scientific standard of the presentations at the conference, a quality assurance process which is consistent with the capacity building goal of AfHEA will be used in the review of abstracts.

Reviewed abstracts will be categorised as follows:

• Accept category: abstracts that meet all the set criteria and for which the reviewers have no doubt about their high standard
• Revise category: abstracts that can be markedly improved after addressing comments given by reviewers or for which the scientific committee judges that there is not enough basis from the abstract alone to make a firm determination of the likely suitability and quality of the final presentation.
• Reject category: abstracts that do not meet the set criteria and which reviewers find are of a low standard

 This categorization ensures that junior researchers, whose abstracts would otherwise be rejected, benefit from a mentorship process (described below) and hence an opportunity to present a quality paper in an international conference. The quality of the presentation of studies whose abstracts fall into the ‘Revise category’ will be improved through the following QA process:

• Mentorship support (virtual and face-to-face) will be offered to junior researchers to help improve their abstracts and presentations.
• Presenters will be required to submit their draft PPT presentations, before the conference, for review by the reviewers. Reviewed abstracts and presentations will be returned to presenters by January 15, 2022.
• Such authors may further be asked to make mock presentations on the first day of the conference (before the conference sessions begin).

This process is consistent with AfHEA’s goal of capacity building for junior colleagues.

Participation in the mentorship and revision processes is voluntary but AfHEA reserves the right to reject an abstract outright should the author(s) refuse to take advantage of the above quality assurance process.

The abstract submissions received for the conference (individual and organized sessions) will inform the organization of the parallel sessions and AfHEA reserves the right to determine the technical composition of those sessions. Applicants for individual abstracts will be notified of reviewers’ decision on their abstracts by October 31, 2021 while applicants of organized sessions will be notified no later than November 30, 2021.

Summary of key dates

Call for Expression of Interest to Participate in a Scientific Writing Workshop

The African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA), in partnership with the World Health Organization – Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO), is planning to host a practical virtual scientific writing workshop and mentorship programme between April and May 2021. This event is aimed at capacity building for AfHEA’s members, leading up to the forthcoming AfHEA’s scientific conference in March 2022.

The proposed scientific writing workshop and mentorship programme is themed: “Research to support equitable health systems in sub-Saharan Africa”.  The programme’s outputs include (i) mentorship and building the capacity of early to mid-career African researchers in health economics, health policy and health systems, and (ii) a completed scientific journal paper to be submitted for publication in a special issue of a reputable scientific journal to be identified jointly by AfHEA and the WHO-AFRO. The virtual activities, funded by the WHO-AFRO, will run over an extended period to accommodate participants, especially with the current realities created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The capacity building component involves mentorship activities with individual participants paired with established researchers to guide them through writing and completing a publishable research paper.

Participation

Participation in these programmes and activities is through a competitive selection process.  To qualify for participation, applicants are required to submit online an extended abstract that is not less than 800 words and not more than 1200 words via: https://afhea.org/en/events/call-for-eoi by Friday, 26^th  March 2021, 5 pm GMT.  All applicants must demonstrate how they meet the criteria below when submitting their extended abstract.

Applicants must be early- to mid-career researchers (i.e. with less than 10 years from obtaining the highest degree (Masters or a PhD)) based in Africa or are nationals of any country in Africa.  Female applicants are particularly encouraged to apply.

The proposed paper must be related to the theme: Research to support equitable health systems in sub-Saharan Africa.

Language: All submissions must be in English. The proposed outlet will be a journal published in English, but non-English speakers are welcome to submit their abstracts for consideration as long as their research papers are written in English.

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application by email by the first week of April, 2021.  Successful applicants will receive detailed information on the processes and procedures for the programme.

The workshop is funded by Hideyo Noguchi African Prize for medical research and medical services.

Below please find some guidelines for the extended abstract.

Theme: Research to support equitable health systems in sub-Saharan Africa

Extended abstract template

(800 – 1,200 words)

Introduction/Background (100-200 words)

• Describe why this research is important
• How does this research contribute to achieving equitable health systems in Africa (or a country in sub-Saharan Africa)?
• What are your research objectives?

Methods (150-200 words)

• Your research should be empirical. However, systematic reviews are also acceptable.
• Describe and justify your research methodology, including the study design (qualitative, quantitative or mixed research is acceptable). If it is a systematic review, provide details on how this review was conducted, including the exclusion and inclusion criteria, how the included papers’ quality was assessed, etc.
• Describe your sampling approach or the existing data (E.g., the Demographic and Health Survey data) used in the research, where applicable.
• Describe the data analysis process and method.
• Where applicable, describe how to interpret your results

Results (150-200 words)

• Provide an overview of your results, interpreting and highlighting significant results.

Discussion (300-500 words)

• Discuss your findings, noting how they relate to previous research.
• Discuss the contributions of your research findings to achieving equitable health systems in the focal country or in sub-Saharan Africa
• What are the limitations of the research?
• What are the key policy recommendations from this research?

AfHEA appoints Mr. Matthias Akuliga Aneinini as Director of Operations

Part of AfHEA’s ongoing transition is the recruitment of the Director of Operations which was approved by the Board of Trustees.

Matthias is a Chartered Accountant and a Development practitioner. He holds a Master’s in Business Administration in Finance (MBA-Finance) from Central University - Ghana, a Master of Arts in Development Studies and Bachelor of Arts in Economics with Sociology degrees both from the University of Ghana.

Continue Reading

Message from Board Chairperson: Happy New Year 2021

Dear colleagues

At the beginning of this year, I  would like to wish you and your beloved ones a holy and happy year 2021. May it be full of peace, joy, health and serenity more than it was in 2020.

2020 which has seen many of our people torn from our affection because of this pandemic. Thoughts to them.

Continue Reading