Call for Papers: Mass Gathering Preparedness and Public Health Recommendations

JMIR Public Health and Surveillance is inviting manuscripts for a special issue addressing “Mass Gathering Preparedness and Public Health Recommendations". 

Mass Gatherings are defined as an aggregation of people ranging from as few as 1,000 individuals to upwards of 25,000 in a specific location for a designated period of time. Given the complex challenges of mass gatherings, the public authorities and supporting organizations need to be ready to accommodate masses throughout the event including pre-event preparation and post-event activities. For this special issue, guest editors Prof. Yousef Khader, Mark Smolinski, Adam Crawley, and Marlo Libel are seeking research and review articles on patterns and burden of diseases during mass gathering, emergencies during mass gathering, strengths and weakness of surveillance during mass gatherings, and quality and assessment of health care services for mass gatherings.

Mass gathering at the Haji

(A) Pilgrim crowds at the Jamarat bridge. (B) Overcrowding preventing the access of an ambulance. (Image Credit: The Lancet Infectious Disease, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309911702870, licensed under Creative Commons)

For consideration for inclusion in this special issue, the deadline for submission has been extended to November 18, 2018.

To submit the article to this JMIR Theme Issue, please submit at http://publichealth.jmir.org/author and select the section "(Theme Issue 2018) Mass Gathering Preparedness and Public Health Recommendations" during the submission process, see How do I submit to a theme issue?. Indicate in the cover letter to the Editor that manuscript is being submitted for the special issue. All manuscripts will be peer reviewed. Authors need to follow the instructions for authors (http://tinyurl.com/jmir-ifa). Individuals who are interested in submitting a manuscript are encouraged to send their abstracts to Prof. Yousef Khader (yskhader@just.edu.jo) as soon as possible.

Invited/Accepted articles with corresponding authors from institutions which are not the EMPHNET Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) are subject to the regular JMIR publication fees (Submission Fee/Article Processing Fee - for details see Are there costs involved in publishing in JMIR journals, what are your fees?).

Guest Editors:

Yousef S. Khader, BDS, MSc, MSPH, MHPE, FFPH, ScD, Jordan University of Science and Technology

Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH, President, Ending Pandemics

Marlo Libel, MD, MPH, Senior Advisor, Ending Pandemics

Adam Crawley, MPH, Program Officer, Ending Pandemics