Fostering a research collaboration on new global trends in violence against health workers

Violence against health care workers is a growing concern, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic due to divisive rhetoric, mistrust of health professionals, and politicization of COVID policies. The health sector contributes approximately 25% of all reported workplace-related violent incidents. The world currently faces a dire health worker crisis, in terms of staffing shortages, burnout and attrition. This crisis has major consequences for health service access and availability globally. Rising violence and a lack of protections for HCWs are potential contributors to these challenges. There is a major gap in understanding emerging forms of violence against health workers. These forms of violence are seemingly shaped by multiple, interconnected contextual factors, including growing societal polarization, mistrust of health workers, and evolving geopolitical trends, including those pertaining to conflict. These emergent and life-threatening forms of violence, occurring in both workplace and non-workplace settings, include kidnapping, murder, and physical assault by non-state actors, such as militant organizations. These types of violent events appear to be more common in certain low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), even in non-conflict-affected settings, but often linked to broader socio-economic, political and security-related reasons. This proposal aims to initiate planning for a program of work that explores global trends, drivers, and policy responses to violence against health care workers, and develops a case study of violence against these workers in Nigeria, a country that has experienced a wave of these types of events in recent years. The activities to be sponsored by this grant include a rapid sense-making appraisal of current literature, as well as virtual and physical meetings with Nigeria research partners and knowledge users. The activities sponsored by this grant will facilitate a CIHR Project Grant on this topic within one calendar year.