27 research outputs found
Re-engineering of South Africaâs primary health care system: where is the pharmacist?
South Africaâs transition towards a district-based health system (DHS) aims to offer health promotion and prevention services
at community level, through re-engineered primary health care (PHC) services. Along with pharmacy workforce shortages and
service delivery challenges, health reform is a clarion call to strategically re-position the pharmacistâs role in DHS strengthening.
The pharmacistâs involvement in the three DHS streams, namely the clinical specialist support teams, school health services
and municipal ward-based PHC outreach teams, is pertinent. This paper contextualises pharmacistsâ current peripheral role
in the health system, discusses a team-based approach and identifies opportunities to integrate pharmacy students into the
re-vitalised PHC framework. Re-positioning of pharmacists within district clinical specialist support and school health teams
could create opportunities for community-based and population-based services whereby a range of clinical and pharmaceutical
services could materialise. Pharmacy training institutions could strengthen the DHS through established partnerships with
the community and health services. Academic service learning programmes could integrate pharmacy students as part of the
PHC outreach teams to promote community health. Interdependence between the health services, pharmacy schools and
the community would create a platform to contextualise learning and dismantle existing silos between them. Multi-sectoral
engagement could enable pharmacy schools to design strategies to optimise pharmaceutical service delivery and align their
activities towards social accountability.DHE
A snapshot of early childhood care and education in South Africa: institutional offerings, challenges and recommendations
This article draws from a research report on the Project for Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education (PIECCE), which surveyed attitudes, training strategies, materials and entrance requirements across most relevant higher education institutions (HEIs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVETs). The aim of this study was to identify what institutions were offering in terms of training teachers in the birth-to-four age group, to identify the challenges and provide recommendations based on the findings
The contribution of Geography to Environmental Assessment (EA) practice and research in South Africa
Occupational aspirations of low socioeconomic black South African children
There has been a call for a more systematic research focus on the career development of children from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, with the viewpoint that childrenâs career development research needs to be contextually grounded in the countries and cultures where such development occurs. This article describes the occupational aspirations (in terms of typology and status level) of Black South African upper elementary school children of low socioeconomic status. A nonprobability convenience sample of 274 children (157 females, 117 males) from Grades 5 and 6 participated. Two open-ended questions from the Revised Career Awareness Survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results revealed that most children aspired to social and investigative type occupations, with over 80% aspiring to high status occupations. There were few gender differences. The implications of the findings as well as practical considerations in researching more disadvantaged populations are discussed