15/01/2022
Call for Panelists
“Primary Healthcare Delivery in Nigeria: Opportunities, Policies, and Psychosocial Perspectives”
The 6th Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference
Format: Hybrid (In-person, University of Lagos and Virtual) June 21-25, 2022
Deadline: January 20, 2022
Panel Organizer: Opeyemi Akindele and Temitope Ojedokun
There is a growing body of academic literature on disruptive innovations that have helped redefine where and how primary healthcare is delivered to consumers of healthcare in Nigeria. Essentially, these innovations are aimed at providing wider and quicker access to primary healthcare providers and services through multiple channels enabled by technology.
Some of the examples of emerging models of primary care delivery enabled by technology are consultation and prescription services using the Internet and apps (e.g. telemedicine), rapid lab or point of care testing in pharmacies and patient's home, gps-enabled medication delivery services, vaccinations and healthcare logistics.
Building on these studies, this panel seeks to interrogate the contribution of digital disruptions and health technology to the reimagination of healthcare delivery in Africa generally and Nigeria in particular. Role expansion, task shifting, and services integration have been on the rise among healthcare professionals as a result of digital access and health tech adoption. For example, the pharmacy is being reprofessionalised to take on more roles in care delivery.
Consequently, exploring primary healthcare using the theory of consumerism, this panel seeks to understand the impact of consumerisation on the entire healthcare ecosystem: health services delivery, the consumer, the insurers, the regulator and the healthcare professional.
Traditionally, Retail Markets are known more for convenient location, competitive customer service, and provision of shoppers' needs and wants based on demand than for healthcare services delivery.
Now, the trend is shifting towards the utility of retail settings to midwife innovative healthcare delivery. In view of the ongoing cross-breeding of retail and healthcare, this panel seeks answers to questions such as: what are the advantages that retail can transfer to healthcare in birthing a retail healthcare model? What are the challenges to professionalisation of healthcare in retail markets? How can retail healthcare accelerate the attainment of sustainable development goals in Nigeria, and Africa generally?
Furthermore, we seek to understand the consumer in retail healthcare differently from the patient in traditional clinical settings like the hospital by using the theory of consumerism and empowerment. For example, how does the consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) and negotiation power drive the emerging satchetization of healthcare services in retail markets unlike in traditional clinical settings where paternalism is king in the engagement between the patient and the provider.
Contributors are invited to consider innovative primary healthcare delivery and retail healthcare in Nigeria and Africa by exploring the intersections of sustainable development goals, digital disruptions, health technology advances, and the health market, using the theories of consumerism and empowerment.
Interested contributors should send an abstract of no more than 250 words to Akindele Opeyemi via [email protected] by January 20, 2022.
