For more than a decade, the Centre for Initiative and Development (CFID) has worked with individuals, families and communities affected by viral hepatitis and other liver diseases. Our work in prevention, testing, treatment support, patient advocacy and community engagement has exposed us to the enormous challenges faced by people living with chronic liver diseases, particularly those at risk of developing liver cancer.
These experiences have reinforced an important conviction: patients must not only be beneficiaries of scientific research; their experiences, priorities and needs must help shape the questions research seeks to answer.
As a patient-led organisation, CFID is strengthening its institutional research priorities in hepatology, viral hepatitis and liver cancer, with particular attention to the challenges affecting populations in Nigeria and across Africa.
Building a patient-centred research infrastructure
A central component of this effort is our developing REDCap-based Liver Disease and Hepatitis Registry, which we intend to strengthen as a platform for longitudinal research, patient follow-up and improved understanding of liver disease progression and treatment outcomes.
The registry is also being developed to support a broader continuum-of-care approach, connecting research with practical interventions that improve patients’ lives.
Through our community networks and trained peer navigators, including people with lived experience of hepatitis, we aim to strengthen linkage and re-linkage to appropriate clinical services, identify patients at risk of being lost to follow-up, support treatment continuity and improve access to liver disease monitoring.
Our ambition is to ensure that evidence generated through research also helps address the everyday barriers patients face in accessing and remaining in care.
Our emerging research priorities
CFID is particularly interested in advancing research that:
– Investigates the progression of chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis D infection to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma.
– Examines the contributions of environmental exposures, particularly aflatoxins, to liver cancer risk.
– Strengthens early detection, risk prediction and surveillance for liver cancer in African populations.
– Uses longitudinal clinical and patient-generated data to improve understanding of disease progression and treatment outcomes.
– Evaluates peer navigation, linkage and re-linkage to care, treatment retention and patient-centred models of service delivery.
– Translates scientific evidence into better clinical practice, public health policy and equitable access to prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Strengthening scientific leadership and partnerships
We recognise that advancing these priorities requires collaboration across disciplines and institutions.
CFID is therefore exploring partnerships with universities, teaching hospitals, research institutions, laboratory scientists, epidemiologists, clinicians and implementation researchers in Nigeria, across Africa and internationally.
We are particularly interested in engaging experienced hepatology and liver cancer researchers who may wish to provide scientific leadership for this emerging research programme. We welcome conversations with established scientists, including retired academics who remain actively involved in research, mentorship and scientific collaboration.
This initiative forms part of CFID’s broader strategy to strengthen institutional research capabilities across priority health areas, building on our work in antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases.
We seek to create opportunities for African scientific leadership, early-career researcher mentorship and multidisciplinary research collaborations, while preserving the central role of patients and communities in shaping research priorities.
Our vision
We envision a research programme in which clinical science, laboratory discoveries, patient experience and community-based care reinforce one another.
A programme where research helps us understand not only why liver cancer develops, but also why patients are diagnosed late, why some disengage from care, and what can be done to improve their chances of living longer and healthier lives.
Our commitment is to advance science that responds to patients’ needs, strengthens health systems and contributes to preventing avoidable deaths from liver disease and liver cancer.
We welcome expressions of interest from prospective scientific leaders, research institutions and partners who share this ambition.
For partnerships and enquiries: admin@cfidtaraba.org
Advancing Science. Centring Patients. Preventing Liver Cancer.
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