ArticleFamily medicine and community health2026
Role of family medicine on health systems in the Americas: scoping review.
Article in Family medicine and community health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo synthesise the available evidence on the reported role of family physicians in health systems in the Americas.
designA scoping review was conducted following the methodology of the Joanna Briggs Institute. The results were grouped into thematic categories and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Peer-reviewed articles and relevant grey literature published between 2010 and 2025 examining the role or impact of family physicians within health systems in the Americas. Studies that did not explicitly address family physicians or lacked accessible full text were excluded. INFORMATION SOURCES: A comprehensive search was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, LILACS and the Virtual Health Library (BIREME). Grey literature was identified through institutional repositories, policy reports and targeted searches of official websites.
resultsOf 1397 records identified, 34 studies met the inclusion criteria. Most publications were produced between 2013 and 2024 and represented diverse health system contexts across the region. The attributes most frequently associated with family physicians were comprehensiveness, accessibility, continuity of care, coordination and family and community orientation. Across multiple national settings, the included studies consistently reported that stronger integration of family physicians within primary healthcare systems was associated with improved access to services, greater continuity of care, more efficient coordination across levels of care and a more rational use of diagnostic and therapeutic resources.
conclusionsFamily physicians appear to represent an important component of effective primary healthcare systems in the Americas. Their integration within health services is associated with improved service accessibility, greater care continuity and more efficient resource use. Strengthening family medicine workforce capacity and its institutional role may contribute to more equitable, resilient and sustainable health systems across the region. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Protocol registered and available on this OSF project https://osf.io/pnf2b/.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.