Dear Colleagues,

The social determinants of health (SDoH), defined by the World Health Organization as nonmedical conditions in which “people are born, grow, work, live, and age,” impact one’s quality of life via access to healthcare, health education, and awareness. Among the five major domains of SDoH, economic stability and neighborhood and built environment are key contributors to the disparities in health, healthcare access, and quality. Individuals of a lower socioeconomic status face multiple barriers to maintaining good health and accessing quality care and often become dependent on unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Identifying these disparities at the individual and aggregate levels will provide pathways to targeted place-based interventions and recommendations for policy change on a broader scale.

This Special Issue invites manuscripts that consider mobility and transportation, location of facilities, urban and rural healthcare disparities, uninsured rates, unemployment rates, high school and college education, and policies across states and countries as potential barriers to accessing quality care and maintaining good health. From data analytic perspectives, manuscripts on hotspot and cluster analysis, spatiotemporal methods, Bayesian analysis, multilevel modeling, disease mapping, and epidemiologic methods will be considered. Case studies on disparities in infectious diseases, chronic noncommunicable diseases (diabetes, hypertension), and access to nutrition will also be considered.

Dr. Rajib Paul
Prof. Dr. Jean-Claude Thill
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

• bayesian analysis
• chronic diseases
• cluster analysis
• disease mapping
• healthcare infrastructure
• infectious diseases
• mobility and transportation
• nutrition
• racial disparity
• rural–urban disparities
• health geography
• spatiotemporal methods