Mapping evidence on the use of health promotion and disease prevention interventions as a strategy to sustaining pro-poor health insurance schemes: a scoping review protocol

BACKGROUND: Removing financial barriers and making healthcare accessible to all who need it remains an essential component of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Pro-poor healthcare financing schemes are policies that enable patients to concentrate on obtaining absolute medical care when needed rather than worrying about the cost of care. The demand for health services in healthcare facilities has increased tremendously due to the increasing burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. This potentially threatens the sustainability of pro-poor health financing schemes. This study seeks to synthesize literature and map evidence on the use of health promotion and disease prevention interventions as a strategy to sustaining pro-poor health financing schemes globally. METHODS: We will conduct a systematic scoping review utilizing the Arksey and O’Malley framework, Levac et al. recommendations, and the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines. A comprehensive keyword search for relevant published articles will be conducted in MEDLINE through PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, SCOPUS, CINAHL, and Science Direct from 1 January 2000 to the last search date in 2021. Limiters such as date and language (English) will be applied, but study design limitations will be removed during the search. Boolean term AND/OR Medical Subject Heading terms will also be included. The reference list of all included articles will also be searched for potentially eligible articles. Two investigators will independently screen the articles in parallel at the abstract and full-text stages using the eligibility criteria designed in a Google form. Charting of data will also be conducted independently by two investigators using a piloted data abstraction form and thematic analysis conducted. The emerging themes will be collated, summarized, and the results reported. DISCUSSION: We hope to provide evidence of diverse health promotion and disease prevention policies/strategies used by countries to sustain their pro-poor health financing schemes for possible adoption by other countries. We also anticipate finding research gaps for further studies to help find innovative contextualized health prevention and promotion strategies to sustain pro-poor health financing schemes especially those in LMICs. The findings will be comprehensively discussed and disseminated at conferences and publication in a peer-reviewed journal. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13643-022-01942-3.