Winner 2017 Distinguished Educator award – Prof. Jose Frantz

SAAHE is proud to announce that Professor Jose Frantz is the 2017 winner of the SAAHE Distinguished Educator award.

Professor Frantz has an outstanding track record as a researcher in her disciplinary field and HPE. With more than 80 peer reviewed publications, 2 book chapters and 43 conference presentations she plays a key role in promoting dialogue, exchanging ideas and disseminating research findings about the education of healthcare professionals. The footprint of dissemination is large; SA universities (UWC, UCT, Fort Hare, UL, UKZN), African universities in Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, and international universities in Norway and USA.

Professor Frantz has hosted international, national and regional workshops that span more than a decade. She has specialised in faculty development workshops that focus on promoting research in both physiotherapy as well as HSE. She is widely recognised as an excellent mentor and supervisor of postgraduate research. Her track record of student supervision, 81 higher degree candidates in 15 years – a remarkable achievement, and the highly prestigious National Research Foundation award for capacity development (see below) speak of her major contribution to developing other HSE practitioners and researchers. Many of her students, under her ongoing mentorship, have achieved great success, including professorial status, head of department appointments and deanship.

Her role as a mentor of African HSE practitioners in the sub-Sahara Africa FAIMER Institute (SAFRI) since its inception in 2008 has been, and continues to be, invaluable. She has worked closely with many fellows in this programme, promoting their own professional development as well as the development of their institutions. Over the past 10 years Professor Frantz has presented her work at six of the annual SAAHE conferences. Professor Frantz’s CV shows ample evidence of national and international collaboration – both disciplinary and HSE, over the past decade. To date she has received more than R 3 million in the form of grants to support all her collaborative research work with SA universities and work in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania. She is currently involved in six collaborative projects focusing on building education and research capacity in Africa. She has also hosted numerous workshops in African countries, and further abroad, which have fostered and developed scholarship in higher education.

Professor Frantz holds national and international leadership positions in which she has made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the discourse about the adequate preparation of health care professionals in physiotherapy. She was Dean of the Faculty of Community Health Sciences at UWC, is currently the DVC for Research and Innovation at UWC, and is a member of key structures in the national Department of Health, including the Health Deans Forum, Health Platform Committee, Joint Standing Advisory Committee, National Physiotherapy forum and a representative on the Physiotherapy Clinical Committee for the clinical placement of physiotherapists. She is also a member of the South African Society of Physiotherapists, the World Confederation of Physiotherapists and the sub-Sahara African FAIMER Regional Institute which focuses specifically on developing HPE who are equipped to provide appropriate training for HPE in Africa. In these roles she has contributed to the development of policy documents regarding physiotherapy education in South Africa and elsewhere is Africa, including Sudan and Zimbabwe. As editor of the South African Journal of Physiotherapy and Deputy Editor of the African Journal of Health Professions Education she plays a pivotal role in advancing the dialogue about the delivery of adequately prepared health care professionals and HPE.

Over the past 15 years Professor Frantz has made, and continues to make, a major contribution to the development of the scholarly career paths of HSE in sub-Saharan Africa. To date she has graduated 47 higher degrees (39 Masters degrees and 8 PhDs) in the training and/or clinical practice of physiotherapy, and she is currently supervising another 8 Masters students and 11 PhD candidates. Her postgraduate students include practitioners from South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Sudan. Her unique skills in higher education capacity development were recently recognised in 2016, when she was awarded the National Research Foundation award for Champion of Research Capacity Development and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions.

Professor Frantz is also a reviewer for the three largest national research organizations in South Africa (National Research Foundation, Medical Research Council, and SANPAD) which provide the vast majority of funding for health professions research in South Africa. In this role she makes a strategic contribution to the national process of acknowledging and rewarding excellence in HSE and promoting the scholarly career paths of HPE in SA.