In this issue

This issue of the Journal of Interprofessional Care celebrates the international growth of the scientific field of interprofessional studies in health and social care, encompassing interprofessional education and collaborative practice, by curating a rich collection of scholarship from Sub-Sharan Africa, courtesy of the Africa Interprofessional Education Network (AfrIPEN). The journal has, from its inception, maintained a social mission to promote collaboration in education, practice, and research worldwide, and a responsibility to fostering interprofessional developments across established and emerging regions. This has been a commitment of successive Editors over the years, not least of our Distinguished Editor the late Professor Scott Reeves. The anniversary of Scott’s passing brings up both happy and painful memories of a unique and dedicated interprofessional scholar whose work inspired a generation and helped spark a global research movement. This issue is part of his legacy.

The value of a historic Journal like ours lies beyond providing a widely accessed international platform for publication of scholarly output. Our true value, we commit, lies in the interprofessional community of scholars we help nurture and grow. Together, the readers, editors, reviewers, and authors of this Journal help generate and disseminate collective scientific knowledge on the rapidly expanding and international field of interprofessional studies in health and social care. The current issue is a testament to that expansion, offering insights and experiences from an emerging interprofessional community. The sharing of such experiences is invaluable for communities seeking to develop in this vein, as well as for those at a more established space that may benefit from reflection and questioning of now ingrained assumptions and practices.

The issues raised in the papers of this collection are not necessarily unique to Africa. Challenges concerning the adoption of an interprofessional mindset and application to education, practice, research, and policy are similar across the world, although these manifest and are experienced differently depending on local context. For example, change has historically been relished by some while loathed by others, and culture is more easily perpetuated than it is shifted. To be sure, different parts of the world are vulnerable to different socioeconomic pressures, opportunities, and challenges but at a fundamental level, we are more similar than different. Changes in health and illness patterns, the aging of the population, rise in chronic conditions, multimorbidity, and non-communicable diseases demand new models of health and social care centered around patient and community need. Combined with a global shortage of health and social care workers, the way we currently deliver care may be unsustainable in the long run. This realization opens up spaces for a dynamic reconfiguration of professional responsibilities, with the creation of new roles and potentially the decommissioning of others. It is partly through this current state of flux, stemming from the need to innovate and evolve care delivery, that the interprofessional field gets its impetus. The implication is clear: we need to educate, train and equip the new and current health and social care workforce with the skills needed for resilient, reflective, and dynamic ways of working with each other as well as with patients, families, and wider communities.

The papers in the current issue of the Journal of Interprofessional Care from our colleagues in Africa exemplify many of the above issues, and many more, inviting us all to reflect on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the international field of interprofessional studies in health and social care.