Policy Interventions to Promote Health and Prevent Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Special Issues in Healthcare often address particular strategies, disciplinary approaches, and developments for patient and health consumer populations. From time to time, it is important to embrace these avenues from a reflective stance. The current Special Issue is devoted to policy pieces on health and disease.

The Community-Based Public Health Task Force defines policy as decisions made by public, private, professional, and community groups or organizations, and by individuals, to affect behavior and to direct resources. The former Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine, considers policy development as the means by which problem identification, technical knowledge of possible solutions, and societal values join to set a course of action. As a form of public policy, health policy is an aggregative form of decision-making that depends on individuals coming together and pooling their expertise and perspectives. Demonstrated by the frequent revisions that occur in professional guidelines as new, more refined evidence emerges and novel external and science-driven circumstances arise, health policymaking is a dynamic, evolving process. It is also formal in the sense that groups of professionals engage in evidence collection, consensus building, and policy formation. In order to be significant for care and prevention, the ultimate product needs to lead to action that makes a difference.

The place of policymaking in the health field is most striking in the latest efforts to establish universal healthcare in its various forms—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the United States, the European Union health strategy “Together for Health,” and the National Health Insurance Bill in South Africa. Such policy efforts are needed to offer the best possible care to diverse populations, and are essential when crises strike, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has also highlighted the role of institutional policy. Were healthcare institutions not flexible in their distribution of beds and treatment resources, allocation protocols would remain unchanging, and marginalized groups would not have demonstrated the relative improvements in morbidity and mortality that have been reported at various points during the pandemic. Professional organizations have been instrumental in developing HIV/AIDS, diabetes hemoglobin A1C level, and lipid screening and treatment recommendations and guidelines. Sources may differ depending on the preventive or therapeutic emphasis, as has happened between the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommendations and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for PSA screening in prostate cancer and genetic testing for hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. Different sources may also collaborate in formulating health policy. Though declared eliminated in 2000, the United States case count for measles rose to 880 in 2019, the highest level since 1994, a development prompting an update in guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Policymaking in the healthcare and public health domains depends on policy development at various levels—governmental, institutional, and professional. Healthcare announces a call for papers dealing with policy interventions aimed at promoting health and ameliorating disease. Submitted papers are expected to address the importance not just of medical and public health actions, which can be offered by single practitioners to single patients and families, but of policy as it pertains to multiple persons, groups, and populations. Articles may address contrasting portions of the healthcare and public health spectrum—from high-tech medical technologies to mental and behavioral health to lifestyle, environmental, and genetically oriented areas of research and practice. A lack of consistent policy has played a role in the current opioid and gun violence epidemics and the torrent of PFAs polluting the environment. The ideal, especially for burgeoning health technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, is for health policy to precede or parallel scientific advancement. The consequences of setting policymaking aside are rogue action on the part of individuals and companies, the marketing of preventive or therapeutic regimens that are at best ineffective and at worst dangerous, and discriminatory or inequitable health practices.

In addition to original research articles and reviews, acceptable submission formats include Perspective pieces and Opinion Editorials that are well referenced.

The pace of medical and public health progress is ongoing. Translation to the clinical domain, population level, and realm of oversight depends on thoughtful policy articulation. Authors are invited to contribute writing that will extend current policy thought and create new insights from within their respective field.

To better health and health guidance.

Dr. Stephen M. Modell
Guest Editor

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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.