Access to Health Care and Use of Health Care Services Among Males in Africa: Protocol for a Scoping Review.

Abstract

Background: There is a scarcity of data on males' health-seeking behavior, as well as their access to and use of health care services, in Africa. According to some studies, men are less likely than women to seek medical help for issues such as communicable and noncommunicable diseases, depression, substance abuse, physical disabilities, and stressful life events. The study of males' health-seeking behaviors is important, because it allows us to learn about male health, how masculinity encourages underuse of health care services, how this affects males' overall health and well-being, and how cultural values and backgrounds may impact older men's health-seeking behaviors.

Objective: The objective of this review is to assess evidence on how males access and use health care services and their health knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions to identify gaps for targeted, context-specific strategies to improve males' health and outcomes, particularly in Africa.

Methods: The scoping review process will be guided by the methodology frameworks of the Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksey and O'Malley and will follow 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 and 2023: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, African Journals Online, and Google Scholar. Two reviewers will independently screen full texts and chart the data; a third reviewer will be engaged in the event of disagreement between the 2 independent reviewers. The results of this scoping review will be summarized quantitatively through numerical counts and qualitatively through a narrative synthesis.

Results: The electronic database search was conducted between March and April 2023 and redone in April 2024 to include the most recent articles. A total of 114,737 articles were retrieved and 4258 removed as duplicates. After title screening, 337 results remained, and after abstract selection, 140 results remained. As of December 2024, the scoping review was in the full-text screening phase. We plan to complete data extraction, synthesis, and writing of the entire manuscript of the review in January 2025, and then submit it to a journal for peer review and publication in February 2025.

Conclusions: The scoping review results will advance the current knowledge about health-seeking behavior and access to and uptake of health care services among African males. To our knowledge, this scoping review is the first on this topic, and it will identify vital information on the barriers to and facilitators of African males' health care access and uptake. It will also provide information on successful health care programs for males that may be tailored and adopted across different African contexts.

Trial registration: OSF Registries https://osf.io/xz6sr.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/52351.