Papers with Purpose: Writing Workshops for Research Impact with early career Health Professions Education Scholars in Southern Africa

The “Papers with Purpose” programme focuses on empowering and supporting early career researchers, from across the African continent, to publish impactful Health Professions Education research.

Health Professions Education (HPE) is a powerful field with impact that extends from educational contexts to health systems and patient care. Whilst educational and health inequities remain in the global South, HPE seeks to transform these realities through quality postgraduate training and scholarship. In Southern Africa, HPE research is rapidly growing, however graduates with formal educational qualifications, and scholarly outputs remain low in comparison to that of the global North. The implications of this skewed global knowledge hierarchy are significant in terms of knowledge production, educational outcomes and patient care. Without the concerted establishment of a foundational southern knowledge base, educators and healthcare providers will continue to turn to northern conceptualisations of ‘best practice’ that are often culturally inappropriate, and contextually ineffective. Therefore, the “Papers with Purpose” programme seeks to address this imbalance through a purpose-designed programme including research writing workshops to mentor participants to publish their scholarship, and conference participation, to strengthen the networks and knowledge base of early career HPE researchers from Southern Africa.

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