JMIR Public Health and Surveillance

A multidisciplinary journal that focuses on the intersection of public health and technology, public health informatics, mass media campaigns, surveillance, participatory epidemiology, and innovation in public health practice and research.

Editor-in-Chief:

Travis Sanchez, DVM, MPH, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, USA


Impact Factor 3.5 CiteScore 13.7

JMIR Public Health & Surveillance (JPHS, Editor-in-chief: Travis Sanchez, Emory University/Rollins School of Public Health) is a top-ranked (Q1) Clarivate (SCIE, SSCI etc), ScopusPMC/PubMedMEDLINE, CABI, and EBSCO/EBSCO essentials indexed, peer-reviewed international multidisciplinary journal with a unique focus on the intersection of innovation and technology in public health, and includes topics like public health informatics, surveillance (surveillance systems and rapid reports), participatory epidemiology, infodemiology and infoveillance, digital disease detection, digital epidemiology, electronic public health interventions, mass media/social media campaigns, health communication, and emerging population health analysis systems and tools. In June 2024, JPHS received an impact factor of 3.5. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance received a CiteScore of 13.7, placing it in the 97th percentile (#18 of 665) as a Q1 journal in the field of Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health.

JPHS has an international author- and readership and welcomes submissions from around the world.

We publish regular articles, reviews, protocols/system descriptions and viewpoint papers on all aspects of public health, with a focus on innovation and technology in public health. The main themes/topics covered by this journal can be found here.

Apart from publishing traditional public health research and viewpoint papers as well as reports from traditional surveillance systems, JPH was one of the first (if not the only) peer-reviewed journals to publish papers with surveillance or pharmacovigilance data from non-traditional, unstructured big data and text sources such as social media and the Internet (infoveillance, digital disease detection), or reports on novel participatory epidemiology projects, where observations are solicited from the public.  

Among other innovations, JPHS is also dedicated to support rapid open data sharing and rapid open access to surveillance and outbreak data. As one of the novel features we plan to publish rapid or even real-time surveillance reports and open data. The methods and description of the surveillance system may be peer-reviewed and published only once in detail, in a  "baseline report" (in a JMIR Res Protoc or a JMIR Public Health & Surveill paper), and authors then have the possibility to publish data and reports in frequent intervals rapidly and with only minimal additional peer-review (we call this article type "Rapid Surveillance Reports"). JMIR Publications may even work with authors/researchers and developers of selected surveillance systems on APIs for semi-automated reports (e.g. weekly reports to be automatically published in JPHS and indexed in PubMed, based on data-feeds from surveillance systems and minimal narratives and abstracts).

Furthermore, during epidemics and public health emergencies, submissions with critical data will be processed with expedited peer-review to enable publication within days or even in real-time.

We also publish descriptions of open data resources and open source software. Where possible, we can and want to publish or even host the actual software or dataset on the journal website.

Recent Articles

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HIV/AIDS/STI Prevention and Care

Behavioral differences exist between countries, regions, and religions. With rapid development in recent decades, an increasing number of international immigrants from different regions with different religions have settled in China. The degrees to which sexual behaviors— particularly risky sexual behaviors—differ by religion and geographical areas are not known.

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Obesity and Nutrition as Public Health Problem

Globally, over 39% of individuals are obese. Metabolic syndrome, usually accompanied by obesity, is regarded as a major contributor to noncommunicable diseases. Given this relationship, the concepts of metabolically healthy and unhealthy obesity, considering metabolic status, have been evolving. Attention is being directed to metabolically healthy people with obesity who have relatively low transition rates to noncommunicable diseases. As obesity rates continue to rise and unhealthy behaviors prevail among young adults, there is a growing need for obesity management that considers these metabolic statuses. A nomogram can be used as an effective tool to predict the risk of transitioning to metabolically unhealthy obesity from a metabolically healthy status.

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General Articles on Innovation and Technology in Public Health

Suicide is a significant public health issue. Many risk prediction tools have been developed to estimate an individual’s risk of suicide. Risk prediction models can go beyond individual risk assessment; one important application of risk prediction models is population health planning. Suicide is a result of the interaction among the risk and protective factors at the individual, health care system, and community levels. Thus, policy and decision makers can play an important role in suicide prevention. However, few prediction models for the population risk of suicide have been developed.

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Surveillance Systems

Syndromic surveillance represents a potentially inexpensive supplement to test-based coronavirus-disease of 2019 (COVID-19) surveillance. By strengthening surveillance of COVID-Like Illness (CLI), targeted and rapid interventions can be facilitated that prevent COVID-19 outbreaks without primary reliance on testing. We sought to assess the strength of the relationship between confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and self-reported and healthcare provider-reported CLI in university and county settings, respectively.

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Cross-Sectional Studies in Public Health

Information on the public’s preferences for current public health and social measures (PHSMs) and people’s mental health under PHSMs is insufficient.

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Reviews on Public Health Technology and Innovation

Finding individuals with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is important to control the pandemic and improve patient clinical outcomes. To our knowledge, systematic reviews assessing the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of different DR-TB case-finding strategies to inform research, policy, and practice, have not been conducted and the scope of primary research is unknown.

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Participatory Epidemiology and Surveillance

A challenge in achieving the malaria-elimination target in the Greater Mekong Subregion, including Thailand, is the predominance of Plasmodium vivax malaria, which has shown extreme resilience to control measures.

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LGBTQ Issues

Mental health disparities have been documented among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults in the United States. Substance use disorders and suicidal ideation have been identified as important health concerns for this population. However, the interrelationships among these factors are not well understood.

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COVID-19 Vaccination

The potential association between bivalent COVID-19 vaccination and ischemic stroke remains uncertain, despite several studies conducted thus far.

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Viewpoint and Opinions on Technology and Innovation in Public Health

The use of innovative digital health technologies in public health is expanding quickly, including the use of these tools in outbreak response. The translation of a digital health innovation into effective public health practice is a complex process requiring diverse enablers across the people, process and technology domains. This paper describes a novel web-based application that was designed and implemented by a district-level public health authority to assist residential aged care facilities in influenza and COVID-19 outbreak detection and response. It discusses some of the challenges, enablers and key lessons learned in designing and implementing such a novel application from the perspectives of the public health practitioners (the authors) that undertook this project.

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Longitudinal and Cohort Studies in Public Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and disrupted the chain of survival. Even after the end of the pandemic, the risk of new variants and surges persists. Analyzing the characteristics of OHCA during the pandemic is important to prepare for the next pandemic and to avoid repeated negative outcomes. However, previous studies have yielded somewhat varied results, depending on the health care system or the specific characteristics of social structures.

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Viewpoint and Opinions on Technology and Innovation in Public Health

Geospatial data reporting from surveillance and immunization efforts is a key aspect of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Africa. These activities are coordinated through the WHO Regional Office for Africa Geographic Information Systems Centre. To ensure the accuracy of field-collected data, the WHO Regional Office for Africa Geographic Information Systems Centre has developed mobile phone apps such as electronic surveillance (eSURV) and integrated supportive supervision (ISS) geospatial data collection programs. While eSURV and ISS have played a vital role in efforts to eradicate polio and control other communicable diseases in Africa, disease surveillance efforts have been hampered by incomplete and inaccurate listings of health care sites throughout the continent. To address this shortcoming, data compiled from eSURV and ISS are being used to develop, update, and validate a Health Facility master list for the WHO African region that contains comprehensive listings of the names, locations, and types of health facilities in each member state. The WHO and Ministry of Health field officers are responsible for documenting and transmitting the relevant geospatial location information regarding health facilities and traditional medicine sites using the eSURV and ISS form; this information is then used to update the Health Facility master list and is also made available to national ministries of health to update their respective health facility lists. This consolidation of health facility information into a single registry is expected to improve disease surveillance and facilitate epidemiologic research for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, as well as aid public health efforts directed at other diseases across the African continent. This review examines active surveillance using eSURV at the district, country, and regional levels, highlighting its role in supporting polio surveillance and immunization efforts, as well as its potential to serve as a fundamental basis for broader public health initiatives and research throughout Africa.

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