Afrocentric Collaborative Care: Supporting Context Specific Digital Health and Care

Non-communicable diseases e.g., diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, and cancers etc, are slowly becoming silent epidemics in African countries. Most of them are closely linked with unique clinical manifestations and could go undetected until there is a complication. Management of these diseases requires long-term informal care, and this has resulted in a complex network of relationships between patients, complementary care providers, informal and formal caregivers. Unfortunately, there are not many studies investigating these relationships from a decolonized perspective with the intention of co-designing interventions that are unique to their lived experiences. This workshop aims to bring together researchers working on digital health and care projects in Africa to discuss the implications of existing collaborative care structures and cultures for technology, as well as near future Afrocentric approaches to collaborative care. We aim to highlight existing challenges in technology enabled collaborative care, differentiate them from established challenges in the Global North and identify design opportunities. This workshop will contribute to the growing attention shown to the African continent in CSCW and HCI research more broadly.