Toward People-Centred Healthcare: Practices, Perspectives, Places, and Possibilities
Health systems across the world are increasingly challenged to deliver care that is not only safe and effective but also meaningful to the people they serve. The concept of people-centred healthcare has emerged as a guiding framework that places the values, preferences, and lived experiences of patients, families, communities, and healthcare workers at the core of care delivery. While patient centeredness has long been recognized as a key dimension of quality, its translation into practice remains uneven. Many systems continue to rely on performance measures that prioritize institutional efficiency or clinical outcomes without fully capturing what matters most to individuals receiving care. As healthcare becomes more complex, fragmented, and technologically driven, there is renewed interest in approaches that realign systems around human needs. This Collection, Toward People-Centred Healthcare: Practices, Perspectives, Places, and Possibilities, seeks to advance dialogue and evidence that elevate people centred approaches across diverse care settings.
Advancing people centred healthcare is essential because it directly influences health outcomes and trust in health systems. When care aligns with the preferences and realities of individuals and communities, it improves engagement, adherence, and overall patient experience while also supporting more efficient use of resources. Conversely, when systems fail to account for patient perspectives, they risk perpetuating disparities, particularly among populations that are historically underserved or marginalized. In addition, healthcare workers themselves are central to people-centred systems, and their experiences shape care quality, workforce sustainability, and organizational performance. The growing complexity of care delivery, including integration of digital tools and multisector partnerships, further underscores the need for frameworks that ensure human priorities remain central. Strengthening the evidence base for people-centred practices allows leaders and policymakers to design systems that are responsive, equitable, and resilient, ultimately improving outcomes that people themselves recognize as meaningful.
This Collection focuses on advancing understanding of people-centred healthcare across a wide range of contexts, emphasizing practical insights and leadership implications. Key subtopics include measurement of people-centred outcomes, patient and clinician experience, community-engaged care models, workforce perspectives, and system level innovations that embed people-centred principles into practice. Contributions may explore diverse care environments, from large health systems to small community clinics, and from high resource to resource limited settings. The Collection also encourages work that examines how place and context shape the delivery and experience of care. Consistent with the scope of the Journal of Healthcare Leadership, preferred article types include original research, systematic or narrative reviews, case studies, quality improvement evaluations, and policy or leadership analyses. Submissions that offer actionable insights for healthcare leaders, translate evidence into practice, and highlight scalable or transferable approaches are particularly encouraged.
Keywords: Patient Experience, Quality Improvement, Digital Health, Care coordination, Workforce
All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo desk assessment and peer review if they can pass the desk assessments as part of our standard editorial process; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).
The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 6 April 2027.
Please contact Saniya Qureshi at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.
