Integrating Medical Librarians in Evidence-Based Medical Practice in Africa: A Survey of Current Practices and Challenges

Abstract

Librarians’ involvement in Evidence-Based Medical Practice (EBMP) has been widely reported from the Global North. The cross-sectional study designed a survey to investigate how African medical librarians integrate into EBMP. The respondents comprised medical librarians from 12 African countries. Findings revealed that African medical librarians are mostly involved in EBMP activities related to resource use, management, and evidence dissemination. The leading EBMP tools reportedly used or promoted by the librarians include UpToDate and Cochrane Library, while the leading challenges encountered in offering support for EBMP are related to skill deficiency, poor funding, and poor internet connectivity.

Keywords:

• Africa
• digital tools
• Evidence-Based Medical Practice
• Evidence-Based Medicine
• health information
• human resources for health
• medical librarians
• patient care

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the Abundance Foundation and the Livelihood Impact Fund for the support of the Better Evidence programme in Africa (www.ariadnelabs.org/better-evidence/medical-school-program), to Research4Life (www.research4life.org) for the continued support for access to evidence for healthcare in Africa, and to the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (www.ahila.org) and its partners for the EBMP capacity-building support for medical librarians in Africa.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Data available on request from the authors

Additional information

Funding

The authors report no funding is associated with the work reported in this article.

Notes on contributors

Biliamin O. Popoola

Biliamin Oladele Popoola, MLIS is an academic librarian, researcher, and Knowledge Management expert from Nigeria. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Anatomy and a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Studies. Biliamin is presently the Systems, Scholarly Communications & Evidence-Based Medicine Librarian at the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo City, Nigeria, the Secretary-General for the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA), and a Better Evidence for Training Champion.

Mercy W. Monde

Mercy W. Monde, MLIS is Acting Head of Medical Library at the University of Zambia School of Medicine. She holds a Certificate in Nursing, a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Library Information Science. As a researcher and academic librarian, Mercy has interests in Evidence-Based Medicine/Health, Knowledge translation and consumer health information. She is currently the President of the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA) and a Better Evidence for Training Champion.

Julie Rosenberg

Julie Rosenberg, MPH, is Associate Director, Better Evidence at Ariadne Labs and Deputy Director of the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard. Previously, Julie worked in clinical research and in community-based nonprofit organizations in Latin America and the US. Julie has an MPH in epidemiology and global health from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, a BA in anthropology from Harvard College and is completing her DrPh in public health leadership.