Advancing HIV Care in Africa: Leveraging Social Determinants, Digital Health Innovations, Person-Centred Approaches, and Emerging Trends

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, substantial progress has been made in expanding HIV prevention, treatment, and care across Africa, particularly with the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Despite these advances, persistent disparities remain in access to care, retention, adherence, and viral suppression. These gaps are increasingly understood to be shaped by complex and interrelated social determinants of health, including socioeconomic inequalities, gender dynamics, stigma, mental health conditions, and health system constraints.

Simultaneously, the HIV care landscape is rapidly evolving. Digital health innovations, differentiated service delivery models, and person-centred approaches are transforming how care is delivered and experienced. Emerging trends, such as the integration of mental health services, use of mobile health (mHealth) technologies, and data-driven care, offer new opportunities to address long-standing barriers and improve outcomes.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, which will advance the evidence base on how these intersecting factors can be harnessed to strengthen HIV care across diverse African settings.

This Special Issue will explore innovative, evidence-based approaches to improving HIV care in Africa by examining the role of social determinants, digital health solutions, and data-driven approaches, alongside person-centred care models.

It will generate actionable insights to inform policy, strengthen health systems, and enhance patient outcomes in alignment with universal health coverage (UHC) and global HIV targets.

The scope of this Special Issue aligns with the journal’s focus on tropical medicine and infectious diseases. The Issue welcomes interdisciplinary, implementation-focused, and translational research that advances understanding of HIV prevention, treatment, and service delivery, as well as health equity, while providing contextually relevant findings and practical implications for improving HIV care and related health outcomes in African contexts.

For this Special Issue, original research articles, systematic reviews and high-quality narrative reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Social determinants influencing HIV care outcomes (e.g., adherence, retention, viral suppression);
• Digital health innovations in HIV care (e.g., mHealth, telemedicine, electronic adherence monitoring);
• Data-driven decision-making and data science applications in HIV care (e.g., predictive analytics, machine learning, use of routine health data, and real-time monitoring systems);
• Person-centred and differentiated service delivery models;
• Mental health and its integration into HIV care;
• Gender, stigma and structural inequalities in HIV care access and outcomes;
• Health system strengthening and service integration;
• Community-based interventions and models of care;
• Implementation science and policy-relevant research;
• Innovations targeting key and vulnerable populations;
• Emerging trends and future directions in HIV care in Africa.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Laston Gonah
Prof. Olanrewaju Oladimeji
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• HIV care
• social determinants of health
• digital health
• data science
• implementation science
• person-centred care
• antiretroviral therapy adherence
• retention in care
• viral suppression
• Africa