Promoting Patient-Centered Care for Pediatric Rheumatology Across Africa

The landscape of pediatric rheumatology care across Africa is rapidly changing and expanding. Despite the health burden of acute conditions such as infections we strive to promote awareness and optimize healthcare for children with arthritis and its associated diseases to mitigate against the associated morbidity, disability, and mortality. We hope to do this by having the patient’s voice at the center of this discussion and encourage interested authors to showcase their ideologies and research in promoting patient-centered care for pediatric rheumatology in Africa.

The goal of this Research Topic is to highlight the challenges faced by patients with pediatric rheumatological conditions in Africa face and showcase various strategies to help overcome these challenges and promote patient-centered care. Cognizant of the fact that we have diverse socio-cultural backgrounds, it is key to emphasize how we intend to customize our proposed solutions for the various populations we serve to be socio-culturally acceptable while keeping in mind solutions that are feasible, affordable, accessible, and safe.

We look forward to receiving manuscripts highlighting the experiences and perceptions of our patients along with articles that explore solutions to the problems the patients face.

Keywords: patient-centred care, pediatric rheumatology, Africa, quality of life, health care strategies implementation, barriers and challenges, fears and beliefs

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.