TY - JOUR T1 - Unravelling ‘low-resource settings’: a systematic scoping review with qualitative content analysis JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005190 VL - 6 IS - 6 SP - e005190 AU - Chanel van Zyl AU - Marelise Badenhorst AU - Susan Hanekom AU - Martin Heine Y1 - 2021/06/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/6/e005190.abstract N2 - Introduction The effects of healthcare-related inequalities are most evident in low-resource settings. Such settings are often not explicitly defined, and umbrella terms which are easier to operationalise, such as ‘low-to-middle-income countries’ or ‘developing countries’, are often used. Without a deeper understanding of context, such proxies are pregnant with assumptions, insinuate homogeneity that is unsupported and hamper knowledge translation between settings.Methods A systematic scoping review was undertaken to start unravelling the term ‘low-resource setting’. PubMed, Africa-Wide, Web of Science and Scopus were searched (24 June 2019), dating back ≤5 years, using terms related to ‘low-resource setting’ and ‘rehabilitation’. Rehabilitation was chosen as a methodological vehicle due to its holistic nature (eg, multidisciplinary, relevance across burden of disease, and throughout continuum of care) and expertise within the research team. Qualitative content analysis through an inductive approach was used.Results A total of 410 codes were derived from 48 unique articles within the field of rehabilitation, grouped into 63 content categories, and identified nine major themes relating to the term ‘low-resource setting’. Themes that emerged relate to (1) financial pressure, (2) suboptimal healthcare service delivery, (3) underdeveloped infrastructure, (4) paucity of knowledge, (5) research challenges and considerations, (6) restricted social resources, (7) geographical and environmental factors, (8) human resource limitations and (9) the influence of beliefs and practices.Conclusion The emerging themes may assist with (1) the groundwork needed to unravel ‘low-resource settings’ in health-related research, (2) moving away from assumptive umbrella terms like ‘low-to-middle-income countries’ or ‘low/middle-income countries’ and (3) promoting effective knowledge transfer between settings.All data relevant to the study are included in the article or uploaded as online supplemental information. All data has been derived from published work; the full data codebook is available as online supplemental information. ER -