Call for Papers | Community Engagement and Population Health From Practice to Evaluation

Announcement posted 4/11/24

Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) welcomes submissions for its upcoming collection, “Community Engagement and Population Health From Practice to Evaluation.” The burden of chronic disease continues to exact a tremendous impact on populations around the world. Health is shaped by many factors — psychological, physical, environmental, social, and economic — that cannot be improved by one or a few individuals, groups, and organizations. The complexity of what shapes health makes it important to establish and maintain community and the community’s engagement to increase supportive opportunities to improve health. Several terms and concepts over the years, such as community mobilization, community-based participatory research, and social engagement, have been used to describe the importance of different aspects of community engagement. Regardless of the terminology or concept, working collaboratively with communities to address factors affecting health is central to ameliorating persistent health challenges.

For this collection, PCD encourages submissions that reflect on how and where engagement has successfully occurred, including the populations engaged and geographical locations, types of partners involved, community engagement strategies used, and advances in measuring community engagement. PCD encourages the submission of manuscripts covering diverse topics using various article types. Please refer to the Types of Articles page on the journal’s website for specifications for each article type. PCD is seeking submissions on topics including but not limited to the following:

• Defining communities — what to do when community definitions and available data (eg, geography, race/ethnicity) do not align or are missing
• Editorials or essays on the evolution of community engagement: why it matters, theoretical underpinning, and application in diverse settings
• Community engagement in data, analytics, and machine learning for chronic disease prevention and control
• Factors that support and undermine effectiveness and impact of community health workers, champions, change agents, brokers, and/or navigators in community settings
• Community engagement and artificial intelligence — benefits and risks
• Social network analysis as an important tool for understanding communities, their structures, and strengths
• The role of going to and listening to communities
• Innovative examples of how groups have engaged communities to design, implement, and evaluate public health interventions
• Community and/or patient engagement to address health inequities
• Building and sustaining community trust and engagement
• System barriers and system solutions to community engagement
• Systematic reviews exploring the use and effectiveness of community engagement in public health interventions
• Methods and models of community engagement
• Tools and instruments to measure community engagement
• Measuring and evaluating community engagement efforts
• Long-term models and strategies that help sustain community engagement beyond funded project periods

Submission Guidelines
Corresponding authors are required to submit an inquiry to the journal to determine suitability in advance of submitting a manuscript. PCD asks that only the corresponding author submit an inquiry to the journal for review. The corresponding author is the person who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the submission, peer-review, and publication process if the manuscript is accepted. The corresponding author’s inquiry should include the following information:

• Article title
• Name of the corresponding author
• Author name(s), degree(s), title(s), and affiliation(s)
• PCD article type (visit https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/for_authors/types_of_articles.htm)
• Has the article ever been submitted elsewhere for consideration? If yes, please indicate the name of the journal, the date of that journal’s final decision, and an explanation of the decision
• Indicate that the inquiry is related to this Call for Papers
• Abstract (300 words or less)

The deadline to submit an inquiry is April 26, 2024. Submit your inquiry to the Editor in Chief at PCDeditor@cdc.gov for consideration. PCD will provide feedback to the corresponding author about the journal’s interest in the proposed manuscript and guidance on what information is needed.

The deadline to receive your final manuscript is September 16, 2024. If your inquiry is approved, your final manuscript will undergo internal review and external peer review. Manuscripts accepted for publication will be published on a rolling basis. Articles will be assembled into a PDF collection accessible on the PCD website after all accepted papers have been published. Cover letters to the Editor in Chief are required and must state that the submission is for consideration in the PCD collection, “Community Engagement and Population Health From Practice to Evaluation.”

About the Journal
PCD is a peer-reviewed public health journal published by CDC and authored by experts worldwide. PCD was established in 2004 by the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion with a mission to promote dialogue among researchers, practitioners, and policy makers worldwide on the integration and application of research findings and practical experience to improve population health. PCD has a current Impact Factor of 5.5 (2022) and is ranked 21^st of 180 journals in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). For more information about the journal, please visit https://www.cdc.gov/pcd.

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