Home Visits as a Primary Health Care Strategy During COVID-19: Protocol for a Scoping Review

Primary health care played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic by adapting care delivery to maintain essential services and reduce transmission risks. Home visits were used to monitor individuals in isolation, support vulnerable populations at increased risk, and sustain community-based care. However, their organization and operationalization varied across settings, and the available evidence remains fragmented.

This protocol outlines the methods for a scoping review that will systematically map how in-person or hybrid home visits linked to primary, community-based, or first-contact care were organized and operationalized during the COVID-19 response, including the operational approaches, reported outcomes, and remaining knowledge gaps.

This protocol follows the Joanna Briggs Institute methodological framework and will be reported in accordance with the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) statement. Eligibility was defined using the Population, Concept, and Context framework. Searches will be conducted in seven electronic databases (Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and LILACS) without language restrictions and will include eligible studies published from 2020 onward. Conditional supplementary procedures may include backward citation searching and citation mapping of included studies and relevant reviews, as well as targeted searches and limited gray literature searching, if database searches yield limited evidence or leave relevant questions insufficiently represented. Records will be managed in Rayyan. Two reviewers will independently assess eligibility, with disagreements resolved by a third reviewer. All included sources will undergo descriptive mapping. Operational configurations will be classified by provider configuration, delivery modality, and targeting logic. Basic qualitative content analysis will be limited to explicitly reported implementation experiences, barriers, facilitators, contextual adaptations, and recommendations.

Pilot searches were conducted solely to assess feasibility and refine the search strategy; formal searching, screening, data extraction, and synthesis have not yet begun. The review will commence after acceptance of the protocol and is expected to be completed within approximately 6 months.

The review will provide a structured evidence map of home-visit practices during the COVID-19 response and may identify transferable operational lessons and evidence gaps relevant to preparedness for future public health emergencies. Reported outcomes will not be interpreted as evidence of comparative effectiveness or causal effects.