For the second year, PHASA hosted skills building workshops on writing an abstract for a scientific conference. This is part of our commitment to support young researchers and academics to increase the acceptance rate of their abstracts. Workshops were held in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, with between 20-30 people attending in total. The workshops went very well.

Each workshop focused on the criteria for writing an abstract, and it was pointed out that the abstract is a succinct summary of a research project or community programme. Emphasis was placed on the need for clarity, quality, and completeness.

Although participants felt that writing an abstract is not easy, there was general agreement that these PHASA workshops are useful. There was a request that the workshops should be organised a few months before the abstract deadline.