Biosketch

Prof Bob Mash

Since qualifying in 1986 my career as a family physician has had three main phases. During the first decade my focus was on clinical work, particularly community orientated primary care in Cape Town’s townships. During the second decade, whilst working as a family physician in Khayelitsha, I became associated with Family Medicine and Primary Care at Stellenbosch University. During this period I focused on the development of new undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes in Family Medicine and completed my PhD on mental disorders in South African primary care. During the last decade I have come to work full time for the university and have focused particularly on developing research capacity (particularly expanding the doctoral research programme) and research output in the Division of Family Medicine and Primary Care.

While I now supervise Masters level and Doctoral level students with topics that fall across this conceptual framework my major focus areas have been on noncommunicable chronic diseases and strengthening the contribution of the discipline of family medicine to African health systems.

In relation to non-communicable chronic diseases I was a founding member of the Chronic Diseases Initiative for Africa (CDIA). CDIA’s mission is to serve as a collaborating network of researchers in the African region who share a common interest in conducting research and building research capacity in order to reduce the burden of chronic diseases and their underlying risk factors.

I am also active internationally in the region as Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine, which mainly publishes original research from the continent. I represent Africa on the WONCA Global Working Party for Primary Care Research and recently co-edited a book on International Perspectives on Primary Care Research on behalf of WONCA. In addition, I am a founding member and active leader within the PRIMAFAMED Network - an educational and research network in Africa for departments of family medicine and primary care.

I have acted as a reviewer for a number of journals: The Lancet, SA Family Practice Journal, Medical Education Journal, Drug and Alcohol Review, AIDS Care, African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine (PHCFM), PloS ONE, BioMed Central, Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, National Research Foundation, South African Medical Journal. More recently my commitment as Editor-in-Chief of the PHCFM journal has limited my time to also take on peer review elsewhere.

I am the editor of several textbooks that are used throughout Africa.

In 2016 my contribution to family medicine internationally was recognised by inclusion of one of my research articles in a WONCA book “Family Medicine: The Classic Papers”.