Intégration des sciences sociales et de la santé en Afrique et au Moyen-Orient

Integrating Social Science and Healthcare in Africa and the Middle East


Call for Papers

Date: May 27, 2022 to May 29, 2022


8th Annual International Conference on Social Sciences
Integrating Social Science and Healthcare in Africa and the Middle East
Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco, 27-29 May 2022

COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of healthcare in public policy. Healthcare is a complex issue that has links to government policy, representations, infrastructure, social movements, education, communication, finance, training, licensing, and insurance. The medical field itself is very diverse and there are dozens of branches of Medicine and Nursing. Despite repeated and in some cases ongoing debates and controversies, the healthcare field remains under studied from a social science point of view in Morocco and other African and Middle Eastern states. Organizing Healthcare is a challenge for far wealthier states, even when fundamental political questions such as whether it is a right or not are answered. As a middle-income country, Morocco has faced significant challenges in terms of actualizing the constitutional right to healthcare under Article 31 of the 2011 constitution:

The State, the public establishments and the territorial collectivities work for the mobilization of all the means available [disponibles] to facilitate the equal access of the citizens [feminine] and the citizens [masculine] to conditions that permit their enjoyment of the right: to healthcare.

Article 71 sets healthcare as a domain of law, authorizing parliament and the state to legislate and regulate the field. There are also other voices that are part of the conversation in Morocco about healthcare including those of doctors, nurses, patients, medical and nursing students, pharmacists, traditional/alternative practitioners, and other providers in both the public and private domain. Many of these communities are also organized and have associations and unions representing them and these are a crucial part of Moroccan Civil Society. What appears to unite all of these voices is that the current system needs improvement. While there are diverse and different perspectives even within each of these communities, there is a general sense that the current status quo in Moroccan healthcare is not sustainable and does not appear to be meeting the apparent constitutional mandate for universal coverage, despite some good faith efforts such as the RAMED program and the attempt to provide rural areas with medical doctors through financing medical education.

Conference themes

The eighth Annual International Conference organized by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, scheduled for 27-29 May 2022, aims to create a forum where researchers from the social sciences can present their studies of healthcare in an interdisciplinary context with the hope that conversations begin about where to go with healthcare in Morocco. To that end, this conference is also open to those studying healthcare in African and Middle Eastern contexts with the hope that there is effective cross-communication and learning across boundaries. Consequently, we invite papers on the following topics:

• Healthcare policy and politics.
• National Responses to COVID-19: What worked and what did not?
• Gender issues and healthcare
• Healthcare access, affordability, and poverty.
• Medical education policy.
• Pediatric health.
• Mental health.
• Medical communication.
• Assessing programs and insurance policies.
• Traditional/alternative medicine.
• Hospice care.
• Reproductive health.
• International comparative studies.
• Medical tourism by Moroccans and by foreigners in Morocco.
• Private and Public Healthcare.
• Healthcare and Security.
• Health care and ethics.
• Health care from a historical perspective.
• Legalization of Kif

Terms of submission:

Conference presentations can be delivered in Arabic, French, or English, and we encourage scholars to submit either panels or papers. Panels should tackle the same issue from different disciplinary perspectives, whereas papers will be placed in multi-disciplinary panels. Doctoral and other graduate students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals.

Abstracts should indicate the topic, the research question, the hypothesis, and the methodology the paper plans to engage in and should not be more than 350 words long. As conference space and time are limited, papers may not have more than one author; co-authored papers should be presented by one person.

Abstracts should be sent to the Scientific Committee for review by 1 February 2022. Acceptance notices will be sent by 15 March 2022.

The all-inclusive (meals and shared room for two nights) registration fee for the conference is: 500 MAD per person, 300 MAD for students.

To submit an abstract or register for the graduate workshops, please fill out the online form HERE.

Please click HERE to access the description in English, Arabic, and French. 

Contact Info:
Rachid Daoudi

Contact Email:
ssc2022@aui.ma