Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Aug 31, 2023
Open Peer Review Period: Aug 31, 2023 - Oct 26, 2023
Date Accepted: Dec 9, 2024
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Male access to healthcare and utilization of healthcare services in Africa: A scoping review protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
There is a scarcity of data on men's health-seeking behavior, access to, and utilization of healthcare services in Africa. According to some studies, men are less likely than women to seek medical help for issues such as communicable and non- communicable diseases, depression, substance abuse, physical disabilities, and stressful life events. The study of men's health seeking behaviors is important because it allows us to learn about men's health, how masculinity encourages underuse of healthcare services, and how this affects men's overall health and well-being. Also, how cultural values and backgrounds may impact older men’s health seeking behaviors.
Objective:
This review aims to map out evidence on how men access and use healthcare services, their health knowledge, attitude, and perception to identify gaps for targeted context-specific strategies to improve men's health and outcomes, particularly in Africa.
Methods:
The scoping review process will be guided by the methodology framework of the Joanna Briggs Institute’s (JBI), Arksey and O’Malley and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. The following electronic databases will be systematically searched for evidence published between January 2010 to 2023: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, African Journals online and Google scholar. Two reviewers will independently screen full texts and chart data however, a third reviewer will be engaged in the event of disagreement between the two independent reviewers. The results of this scoping review will be summarized quantitatively through numerical counts and qualitatively through a narrative synthesis.
Results:
This review protocol will guide a scoping review process that will assess available evidence to gain and shed light on men's health-seeking behavior and the factors that influence it, such as how men perceive manhood in relation to dominant masculine discourse and how this influences their preferred methods of seeking health care, such as the use of traditional medicine and cultural practices common in many African communities.
Conclusions:
Based on the review's findings, we will recommend the most appropriate context-specific strategies and future research directions to support initiatives aimed at improving men's health-seeking patterns for better access to and engagement in care. Clinical Trial: Open Science Framework link - https://osf.io/xz6sr/
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.