PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1634679
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in Healthcare Professions Education: 2025View all 10 articles
Building Medical Physics Continuing Education Programming Tailored to the Site-Specific Needs in Low-and Middle-Income Countries: An Initial Framework
Provisionally accepted
William Swanson1*
Nataliya Kovalchuk2
Iyobosa Uwadiae3
Matt Goss4Serhii Brovchuk5,6Ruslan Zelinskyi7
Victoria Ainsworth8
Stephanie Parker9
Stephen Avery10
Wil Ngwa11Kelly Kisling12- 1Emory University, Atlanta, United States
- 2Stanford University, Stanford, United States
- 3University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria
- 4Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh, United States
- 5LISOD Israeli Oncology Hospital, Pliuty, Ukraine
- 6O.O. Shalimov National Scientific Center of Surgery and Transplantation, Kyiv, Ukraine
- 7Spizenko Clinic, Kyiv, Ukraine
- 8University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, United States
- 9Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist High Point Medical Center, High Point, United States
- 10University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States
- 11Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States
- 12University of California San Diego, La Jolla, United States
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Low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) are significantly underserved in cancer management resources, contributing the majority of annual cancer incidence and mortality globally. Many patients in LMICs have limited accessibility to radiotherapy, which serves as a standard cancer treatment for many patients, due to lacking infrastructure to support the patient population and trained professionals to deliver treatment. Recent efforts have been made to supplement foundational medical physics knowledge in LMICs by providing continuing education opportunities to establish strong educational leaders at the local level. While high-income countries have ample resources to support well-established education and training standards, it is important to adapt the curricula in a resource-responsible manner. This education and training should be relevant and appropriate to the clinical setting in LMICs. This article collates the experience of members of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and international collaborators to develop and administer optimized medical physics education with limited resources. The framework presented here is intended to be used as a preliminary guide to developing education and training programs specific to the needs of medical physicists in LMICs.
Keywords: Medical physics education, LMICs (low and middle income countries), Clinical training, Cancer, Radiation Oncology
Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 10 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Swanson, Kovalchuk, Uwadiae, Goss, Brovchuk, Zelinskyi, Ainsworth, Parker, Avery, Ngwa and Kisling. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: William Swanson, swanson.bill.j@gmail.com
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