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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Reviews on Public Health Technology and Innovation

Supporting and understanding the health of patients with chronic diseases and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk is often a major challenge. Health data are often used in providing feedback to patients, and visualization plays an important role in facilitating the interpretation and understanding of data and, thus, influencing patients’ behavior. Visual analytics enable efficient analysis and understanding of large datasets in real time. Digital health technologies can promote healthy lifestyle choices and assist in estimating CVD risk.

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Innovative Methods in Public Health and Surveillance

Previous studies investigating environmental and behavioral drivers of chronic disease have often had limited temporal and spatial data coverage. Smartphone-based digital phenotyping mitigates the limitations of these studies by using intensive data collection schemes that take advantage of the widespread use of smartphones while allowing for less burdensome data collection and longer follow-up periods. In addition, smartphone apps can be programmed to conduct daily or intraday surveys on health behaviors and psychological well-being.

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Longitudinal and Cohort Studies in Public Health

Previous studies have proved the effectiveness of endoscopic screening in rural areas; however, long-term, high-quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of risk-adapted Upper Gastrointestinal Cancer (UGC) sequential screening strategies in resource-rich regions is currently lacking.

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Health Care Quality and Health Services Research

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) poses a major burden to global health and economic systems. ABR in community-acquired urinary tract infections (CA-UTIs) has become increasingly prevalent. Accurate estimates of the clinical and economic burden of ABR are needed to support medical resource prioritisation and cost-effectiveness evaluations of UTI interventions.

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Obesity and Nutrition as Public Health Problem

Despite several studies on self-evaluation of health and body shape, existing research on the risk factors of self-perceived overweight is insufficient, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Obesity and Nutrition as Public Health Problem

Although the problem of malnutrition among children in China has greatly improved in recent years, there is a gap compared to developed countries, and there are differences between provinces. Research on long-term comprehensive trends in child growth failure (CGF) in China is needed for further improvement.

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Participatory Epidemiology and Surveillance

In Lesotho, a landlocked country of 2 million people in Southern Africa, the laboratory and case-based COVID-19 surveillance systems were complemented by a participatory surveillance system called “LeCellPHIA” (Lesotho Cell phone Population-based HIV Impact Assessment Survey). Participatory surveillance is when a public population at risk reports symptoms using technology.

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Longitudinal and Cohort Studies in Public Health

Diabetic macular edema (DME), a leading cause of blindness, requires treatment with costly drugs, such as anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) agents. The prolonged use of these effective but expensive drugs results in an incremental economic burden for patients with DME compared with those with diabetes mellitus (DM) without DME. However, there are no studies on the long-term patient-centered economic burden of DME after reimbursement for anti-VEGFs.

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Innovative Methods in Public Health and Surveillance

Several studies have investigated the relationship between ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) and COVID-19 infection. However, complex and conflicting results have generated confusion in the application of these results.

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Prevention and Health Promotion

Increasing physical inactivity is a primary risk factor for diabetes and hypertension, contributing to rising healthcare expenditure and productivity losses. As Singapore's ageing population grows, there is an increased disease burden on her health systems. Large-scale physical activity interventions could potentially reduce the disease burden but face challenges in the uncertainty of long-term health impact and high implementation costs, hindering their adoption.

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Preprints Open for Peer-Review

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