29.09.2025

Public Health Reviews - Calls for papers 2025

The society journal Public Health Reviews has several open collections, many initiated and edited by ASPHER Members and Partners. We hope you will consider submitting your manuscript! PUBLIC HEALTH DIPLOMACY IN A COMPLEX WORLD Guest Editors: Ashish Joshi, Rodrigo Siquera Reis, Ramune Kalediene Global health issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, misinformation, conflicts, and humanitarian emergencies create complex health, economic, and geopolitical challenges. Addressing these crises requires integrating public health into all policy areas and more equitable international cooperation. Lessons from the pandemic stress the importance of combining formal diplomacy (e.g., health attachés and diplomats) with informal diplomacy, involving non-state actors like Non- Governmental Organizations and private enterprises. Strengthening Public Health Diplomacy requires multidisciplinary approaches and cross-sector training to prepare public health professionals to navigate the sociopolitical and cultural complexities of global health. We need more practitioners as public health diplomats who can effectively communicate, facilitate, negotiate and build consensus  using systems thinking, evidence based, community-informed approaches, based on equity-focused and human-centered values to improve health and well-being for all. ARMED CONFLICTS, WARS AND MENTAL HEALTH Guest Editor: Jutta Lindert Armed conflicts and wars continue to affect millions of individuals and communities worldwide, with profound and enduring consequences for health physical and mental health. War not only causes immediate psychological trauma but also disrupts social cohesion, displaces populations, fragments health systems, and exacerbates cycles of poverty and violence. These intersecting challenges—often protracted and multigenerational—are reshaping the priorities of public mental health research, policy, and practice. URBAN HEALTH IN TRANSITION: ADVANCING EVIDENCE AND POLICY FOR HEALTHIER CITIES Guest Editors: Ana Ribeiro, Nino Kuenzli, Ricardo Almendra, Mirko Severin Winkler More than half of the global population lives in urban areas, with this figure expected to grow markedly in the coming decades. Cities are hubs of opportunity but also of complex public health challenges, including deepening inequalities, environmental degradation, population displacement, and the pressures of climate change. These interconnected phenomena, deeply embedded in urban life, are reshaping the landscape of public health practice and research. ADVANCES IN PUBLIC HEALTH LEADERSHIP Guest Editors: Geneviève Chene, Kasia Czabanowska, Didier Koumavi Ekouevi, Joao Breda, Odessa Petit Dit Dariel Effective leadership is crucial for advancing public health and facilitating coordination, initiatives, and responsiveness to community needs. Enhancing leadership competencies in the public health workforce has an important role in responding to acute emergencies such as pandemics, conflict and war, as well as long-term challenges such as climate change and migration. Attention to public health leadership, encompassing communication, science, practice, and training, is gaining traction globally. Governments, public health organizations, and educational institutions must now come to a shared definition and explore innovative approaches to developing leaders. Training and capacity building in public health leadership remains poorly integrated into graduate or post-graduate programs, with only limited access to courses such as the annual WHO European Public Health Leadership Course. DISASTER HEALTH CONVERGENCE: BETTER INTEGRATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND DISASTER MEDICINE Guest Editors: Paul Barach, Raquel Lucas This special issue will explore and promote the integration of public health and disaster medicine, responding to the growing needs for active, vibrant, and novel collaboration between these fields in addressing the wicked challenges of modern global health threats. Recent pandemics, climate change fueled disasters, and armed conflicts have exposed critical gaps in the current training, resilience, and implementation frameworks of public health and disaster health. The importance of close coordination between public health and disaster health entities became highly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. For most jurisdictions, the lack of an integrated epidemic response model impaired the ability of both entities to respond in a timely and effective manner to mitigate the high rates of COVID-19 transmission and its subsequent morbidity and mortality. There is a need for transformational change to bring these disciplines closer together, restore trust in public health leadership, and facilitate a learning systems’ approach based on meaningful and sustained coordination across systems.

Public Health Reviews Robert Otok