Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to contribute to a theme issue on "Design and Public Health" in the journal She
Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation.
Call for Contributions
Over the last century, public health and design evolved, each with its own path, in response to technological, social, and economic transformational changes. The discipline of public health had tremendous success based on science and the rigorous
use of data to inform medical practice and policy. Design, on the other hand, developed new frameworks and methods that helped organizations gain a competitive market advantage by creating attractive and successful products, services, communications, and environments
for their users, usually acting in the interest of a client. Both fields addressed different aspects of well-being; one focused on physical and mental health and the other on creating offerings that helped people live, work, learn, and play.
Today, global climate change, economic disparity, and unregulated media are three interconnected forces disrupting the conventions of both fields. Public health leaders recognize they have to embrace ways
of dealing with the behavioral side of health and integrate different forms of evidence if the field is to succeed at solving seemingly intractable problems sparked by these forces. For example, accelerated biodiversity loss increasing chances for virus transmission
from wild animals to humans or the rise of climate-induced social displacements are more tied to behavior than medicine. Likewise, experienced designers recognize that the meta forces are changing the context of how their clients plan and operate.
As demonstrated by the current COVID-19 pandemic, the interconnected nature of contemporary challenges is complex and requires new approaches that deal with systems and behavior change if we want to create
a fast-impact at a scale that improves the well-being of us all. Both fields can make a difference by once again extending how they work, but this time leveraging each other to reconcile their differences towards a common good. Rather than reinforcing traditional
disciplinary or practice silos, this issue invites diverse contributions to explore how design and public health can complement each other in enabling the well-being of people, organizations, and the natural environment.
About the She Ji Journal
She Ji is a peer-reviewed, trans-disciplinary design journal that provides a unique forum to create new knowledge at the intersection of different fields. The journal focuses
on design, economics, and innovation in today's complex socio-technical environment to further design innovation in industry, business, non-profit services, and government through economic and social value creation.
Open Access and No Fees
The journal is open access under a Creative Commons license. Authors retain the copyright to their articles. Because Tongji University subsidizes the publication, there are no article fees to authors or readers. Nevertheless, your experience in
the Elsevier website can be confusing because the platform requests authors must agree to pay the publication fee, but Tongji University will make the payment.
Preparing and Submitting your Manuscript
Interested authors should prepare their contributions based on the
She Ji paper template, Guide for Authors, and guidelines of Principles of Referencing (see complementary files). For further guidance on preparing manuscripts,
please read the
Author
Information Pack.
When preparing your contribution, please note that, unlike most journals that worry about the number and cost of working with illustrations, She Ji has no limit on the number of illustrations,
colored work, or number of pages you may use. On the contrary, the guest editors welcome figures, diagrams, and illustrations in full color or in black and white.
Authors should submit their contribution via She
Ji’s homepage.
Proposed Timeline
- Open Call - June 22, 2021
- Deadline for Manuscript Submissions - January 31, 2022
- Authors Notification, First Round of Peer Reviews - April 15, 2022
- Deadline for Revised Manuscript Submissions - May 31, 2022
- Authors Notification, Second Round of Peer Reviews - June 15, 2022
- Deadline for Revised Manuscript Submissions - July 31, 2022
- Publication Date (Tentative date) - September 2022
Additional Information
For further information, or to discuss ideas for contributions, please contact the guest editor Andre Nogueira, Ph.D.,
[log in to unmask]
With kind regards,
Guest Editors:
Patrick Whitney (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health)
Carlos
Teixeira, Ph.D. (IIT-Institute of Design)