Call for Papers

Climate Change and Health Security

A Special Feature in Health Security 

Brought to you by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Submission Deadline: All manuscripts should be submitted for consideration by March 21, 2022, to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/healthsecurity. All submissions will be subject to a rigorous peer review. We encourage submissions of original research articles, case studies, and commentaries.

For the past 2 centuries, climate change—simply defined as long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns—has been driven by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, and these activities have resulted weather and climate extremes in every region of the world. Climate change has manifested as increases in the frequency or intensity of some extreme weather events, rising temperatures and sea levels, widespread forest fires, and rapidly declining biodiversity. The health effects of climate change include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, heat-related illness, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather events, changes in the prevalence and geographical distribution of food- and water-borne illnesses and other infectious diseases, and threats to mental health.

Climate change threatens health security when it increases the frequency, length, and intensity of public health emergencies; creates compound disasters with severe and widespread adverse effects on population health; accelerates the emergence or transmission of dangerous infectious diseases; and displaces people from their homes resulting in injury, illness, and lack of access to healthcare. Climate change has also been identified as a threat multiplier, which can exacerbate existing threats to human health and inequities that result in more severe consequences for vulnerable populations.

In its September/October 2022 issue, Health Security will devote a special feature to climate change and its impact upon national and global health security.

Potential topics might include:

• Climate change-related public health emergencies: Investigation of impacts that climate change had during COVID-19 or other infectious disease outbreaks or public health emergencies.
• Public health emergency management and climate change: Investigation of the management of health impacts and emergency response operations during climate change-related public health emergencies.
• Impact of global warming on vulnerable populations: Exploration of the impacts of climate change on the health of high-risk, high-vulnerability populations.
• Displacement of populations and the health impact of climate change: Characterization of the health impact of population movements due to climate change.
• Mitigation of the impact of climate change on health security: Exploration of the success and cost-effectiveness of mitigation strategies.
• Policy recommendations: Consideration of official strategies or policy approaches to mitigate the health security impacts of climate change.
• Practice reports: Reports of the effectiveness of agencies’ response efforts during climate-related natural disasters and large-scale public health emergencies.

Articles on other aspects of climate change as they relate to health security and public health emergencies are also welcome. Research and practice reports will be prioritized for acceptance.

Please direct questions about the special feature to Marc Trotochaud (mtrotoc1@jhu.edu).

Health Security, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., is a bimonthly peer‐reviewed journal. It serves as an international forum for debate and exploration of the key strategic, scientific, and operational issues posed by biological weapons, pandemics and emerging infectious diseases, natural disasters, and other threats to global health. The journal provides multidisciplinary analyses and perspectives essential to the creation of strategies and programs that can diminish the consequences of health emergencies, epidemics, and disasters.

The journal’s international audience includes those professional communities that have strategic, scientific, or operational responsibilities critical to improving health security, including medicine, public health, law, national security, bioscientific research, agriculture, food safety, and drug and vaccine development.

Health Security is indexed in MEDLINE; PubMed; PubMed Central; Current Contents®/Social & Behavioral Sciences; Social Sciences Citation Index®; Social SciSearch®; Journal Citation Reports/Social Sciences Edition; EMBASE/Excerpta Medica; EMBiology; Scopus; ProQuest; CAB Abstracts; and Global Health.

Information for authors: The special feature devoted to the impact of climate change on health security will be published in the September/October 2022 issue of Health Security. Scholarly and review articles, descriptions of practice, case studies, and commentaries are welcome. Original article manuscripts can be up to 4,000 words exclusive of the abstract, tables, figures, and references. Please consult the journal website for specific submission instructions (http://www.liebertpub.com/manuscript/hs).