Multimorbidity Research in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Regional Retreat
22nd – 24th June 2022, Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, Blantyre, Malawi
Background
As life expectancies rise globally, the number of people living with multiple long-term health conditions – increasingly referred to through the conceptual lens of ‘multimorbidity’ – is rising. Many low- and middle-income countries’ (LMICs) systems of research and care have evolved as a composition of disease specific programmes and are particularly unprepared to address this complex health challenge. This is further complicated by the legacies of dominance of models of health and disease which emanate from the minority world. Moreover, the structures of practice and knowledge produced by these parallel programmes and dominant models are further solidified by the political economy of transnational aid, technical assistance, and accounting.
Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, The UK Academy of Medical Sciences set key priorities for research into the burden, determinants, prevention, treatment, and health system implications of multimorbidity and, in collaboration with the Academy of Science South Africa, specifically for sub-Saharan Africa. This built on a growing recognition of the need for more holistic work across disciplinary and organisational boundaries – a need that has been cast into further relief by COVID-19, labelled a global ‘syndemic’. Studies have started to address the different dimensions of multimorbidity across a variety of settings from different disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Collaboration and shared learning across different groups and institutions have been recognised as crucial for bringing about transformations to the research ecosystem that are needed to begin to respond to multimorbidity and to avoid the reproducing inhibitory ‘silos’. However, beyond high-level priority setting activities, there has yet to be a coming together on a regional level of those engaged in the study of multimorbidity in sub-Saharan Africa.
This regional retreat brings together researchers and other key stakeholders to stimulate collaboration, knowledge exchange and collective learning about multimorbidity in sub-Saharan Africa. Our collective starting point is recognition of the heterogeneity of sub-Saharan African countries and their differences from the high-income settings from which most knowledge about multimorbidity derives, but also of a wealth of knowledge and experience already accumulated in academic and applied spheres. The aim of the retreat is to critically explore with participants from these spheres the emerging potentials of this conceptual lens in the context of different problems, disciplines, and settings across the region.
The specific objectives are:
- To discuss the potentials of a ‘multimorbidity’ lens for transforming knowledge and practice around four provisional domains:
- Illness and disease;
- Population-level health data;
- Causality and prevention;
- Health systems and care models;
- To identify cross-cutting themes that describe the types of resource, training, support, and information structures that shape these potentials in different settings;
- To draw together working groups around domains and/or themes for writing outputs for wider circulation;
- To explore the creation of a working group for ongoing collaboration and knowledge exchange, with a view to future events, outputs, and research.
Funded by:
 |
 |
In collaboration with:
 |
 |