Community Influences in Young Children & Adolescents

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue on the impact of community conditions on the health and well-being of children and adolescents in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The venue is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information about the journal, we refer you to http://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph. 

While health inequities are often noted among adult populations, the root of adult inequities likely lie early in development, as variations in health status have been observed in young children and adolescents. Differential exposure to physical, social, and psychosocial stressors likely play an important role in producing and maintaining health and social inequities by socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and immigrant status globally. Despite the growth in empirical research on community characteristics and their influence on children’s and adolescent health and development, much remains to be learned, particularly on the mechanisms through which community characteristics may impact outcomes. Community is often broadly defined, representing not only the residential neighborhood community, but family, school, and other social communities (e.g., social media) that may impact young children and adolescents. Research in this area can offer a critical guide for policy efforts and planning for public health. This issue aims to highlight problems and solutions to community influences on young children’s and adolescent health, behavior, development, and well-being in both high- and low-resource settings. 

This Special Issue is open to any subject area related to the impacts of community factors or the intersection of community factors on health, behavior, development, and well-being of young children and adolescents. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities.

Dr. Katherine P. Theall
Dr. Julia Fleckman
Dr. M. Pia Chaparro
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. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2500 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.