To assess the impact of the 5th Annual Education in Headache for Healthcare Professionals in Africa (EHHPA) on participants’ headache medicine knowledge
While prevalence of migraine in Africa is comparable to the rest of the world, most individuals with headache disorders do not have access to neurologists or headache specialists. There are only 0.01 neurologists per 100,000 inhabitants in Africa. Organized by the Global Patient Advocacy Coalition, the EHHPA provides patient-centered, evidence-based, and practical headache medicine education to first-line healthcare workers in Africa. The conference was administered live online and locally in six countries to reduce burden of internet access on the participants.
Clinicians registered to attend the conference were asked to complete anonymous pre- and post- surveys to gauge their knowledge and satisfaction with the program. The Mayo Clinic granted an IRB exemption.
Of the 1,443 live participants, 687 completed the presurvey (47.6%) and 629 (43.6%) completed the post-survey. More than half of the participants (385, 56.0%) worked in hospital-based settings, 121 (17.6%) in community clinics, and 181 (26.3%) in both. Most (520/688;75.5%) were either students or early career clinicians with 0-10 years of experience and 557 (80%) had no previous training in headache disorders. Before training, 314 (45.7%) felt confident distinguishing migraine from other headaches compared to 600 (95.3%) after training. Nearly two-thirds, (436, 63%) participants needed more training to identify cluster headaches before training, 595 (94.6%) felt confident in identifying cluster headache after training. After training, 600 (95.3%) of the participants felt confident in their approach to treat headache disorders. Almost all participants, 612 (97.3%) felt training improved their headache management skills
The 5th annual EHHPA achieved its goal of providing meaningful education to first-line healthcare workers in Africa.