Systems thinking: advancing health advocacy training ; a perspective from junior family physicians in the Middle East

Healthcare systems are becoming increasingly complex. Physicians are expected to be agents of change to meet the growing health needs. In the Middle East, young family doctors are subtly creating a space for advocacy. Recognising the need for compulsory advocacy training in undergraduate medical curricula, allows health workers and students a concrete exposure to social determinants of health by carrying out clinical encounters from the hospital setting to outpatient dispensaries in underprivileged areas. At the community level, they organise mobile clinics and engage in collaborative initiatives to provide primary healthcare services to vulnerable populations. To be successful, advocacy practice and training should move towards systems thinking. Family doctors need to engage and collaborate with other stakeholders within the healthcare system and understand the dynamics of the relationships between them. This empowers their role in national health agendas, especially those related to universal health coverage (UHC). Future physicians and all members of primary care teams need to partner with people outside their discipline; the idea of interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaboration should be integrated into their schooling and all forms of vocational training.