TY - JOUR T1 - Emerging role of family medicine in South Africa JF - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2018-000736 VL - 3 IS - Suppl 3 SP - e000736 AU - Shabir Moosa AU - Wim Peersman AU - Anselme Derese AU - Michael Kidd AU - Luisa M Pettigrew AU - Amanda Howe AU - Viviana Martinez-Bianchi AU - Jan De Maeseneer Y1 - 2018/09/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/3/Suppl_3/e000736.abstract N2 - Summary boxGlobal health organisations increasingly prioritise integrated, people-centred primary health care as a route to universal health coverage.Despite the role that family physicians can play as key members of primary care teams, they are absent from policy documents in Africa.South African National Health Insurance plans for capitation contracting of private general practitioners may allow decentralised practice-based teamwork to deliver people-centred primary health care.However, private general practitioners need up-skilling in order to achieve cost-effective health care for larger practice panels.African policy-makers should invest in appropriately trained, family doctor-led primary healthcare teams in in order to achieve universal health coverage.The 2016 United Nations-led High-Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth found a nine-dollar return to a one-dollar investment in health, with opportunity for gains across several Sustainable Development Goals.1 The Primary Health Care Performance Initiative, launched in 2015 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank and WHO, highlighted the need for primary care that provides first contact care that is comprehensive, coordinated, continuous, people-centred and accessible.2 WHO suggests five interdependent strategies to achieve ‘integrated, people-centred health services’, one of which is re-orienting the model of care, with strong primary care-based systems providing continuity and coordination. It highlights family medicine as a mechanism to achieve this.3 There is a move from the traditional model of general practice, defined principally by the individual doctor–patient interaction, towards a population-oriented model of family medicine, which embraces coordinated multidisciplinary teamwork, appropriate referral pathways, integrated hospital-based health services, and empowered and accountable community health care.4–9 This evolution makes it well placed to provide comprehensive, coordinated and continuous, first contact primary health care, which can help achieve universal health coverage in all countries of the world.Africa is expected to be a land of economic opportunity by 2060, with an increasingly sophisticated … ER -