Project Earthrise: For the World We Want to Live In (including Manuscripts from the 2020 inVIVO Planetary Health Annual Conference)

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue in Challenges for the publication of the Proceedings of the 2020 inVIVO Planetary Health Annual Conference. This virtual meeting will be held on 1–11 December 2020.

We also welcome outside submissions that focus on understanding and improving the complex relationships between human health and planetary health.

Inviting diverse perspectives from across all dimensions of the arts and the sciences, inVIVO Planetary Health addresses the imperative for creative ecological solutions to challenges in all systems and all scales. In particular, we seek to emphasize the socio-ecobiological interactions in our living environment (including urbanization, food systems, education, social inequity, climate change, biodiversity loss, and microbial ecology) which impact physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, together with the wider community and societal factors that govern these. We continue to have a long-range vision which includes transgenerational and ‘life-course’ approaches to disease prevention and environmental restoration.

Our meeting will bring together a tremendous network of like-minded people from diverse fields whose interests span from planetary/population/environmental health to microbial ecology/systems biology and the deep biological mechanisms—all aiming to work ‘symbiotically’ to connect traditional ‘silos’ through a more integrated systems framework as we seek to improve personal, environmental, economic, and societal health alike. As always, our emphasis is on meaningful collaborations and productive friendships as well as on the data and opportunities we generate.

You are invited to submit papers presented at the 9th Annual Conference of inVIVO Planetary Health (https://www.invivoplanet.com/2020-meeting.html), for publication in Challenges. Participants of this conference, and inVIVO members, will receive a 100% discount on the Article Processing Charges.

We welcome manuscripts that discuss any aspects of personal, environmental, economic and societal health, encouraging diverse perspectives from across many dimensions of the arts and the sciences, as we explore novel solutions and new normative values.

Prof. Dr. Susan L. Prescott
Dr. Ganesa R. Wegienka
Dr. Nicole Redvers
Mr. Jake Robinson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Challenges is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.