Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion

Medical Care invites original research papers on the science of documenting, understanding, and intervening on health care disparities among vulnerable populations served by the VA Healthcare System or highly relevant to Veteran health and health care.

The Journal, Medical Care, in collaboration with two national VA HSR&D Centers for Innovation focused on health equity – the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion (CHERP) and the Health Equity and Rural Outreach Innovation Center (HEROIC), intends to publish a supplemental issue on “The State of Science” in VA Health Equity. Original research papers focused on the science of documenting, understanding, and intervening on health care disparities among vulnerable populations served by the VA Healthcare System or highly relevant to Veteran health and health care are invited.  Vulnerable populations are those who have systematically experienced greater obstacles to health or health care based on race/ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, age, mental health, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, geographic location, or other characteristics linked to discrimination or exclusion.  Special consideration will be given to innovative interventions and implementation research that engages Veterans and/or operational stakeholders as partners in reducing disparities in health or health care and to papers that provide a strong foundation for future evidence-based implementation research.

All manuscripts will undergo standard peer review by the Medical Care editors and peer referees as defined by the Medical Care policy. Accepted manuscripts will be evaluated for inclusion into the supplement. Those that are not selected for the supplement will be considered for publication in the standard journal issue.

Potential authors should visit the Medical Care website to review the Instructions for Authors.  The word limit for original manuscripts is 3,500 and 2,000 for brief reports. To be considered for inclusion in this supplement, the manuscript submission deadline has been extended to December 1, 2016, using the online submission system.  IMPORTANT:  Please select "VA Health Equity Supplement" from the drop-down menu for this special issue. 

Please Note: VA servers may block the receipt of registration confirmation emails and other important email communications from the journal Medical Care to authors.
Both corresponding authors and co-authors are strongly encouraged to use non-Va email addresses in their manuscript submission request to ensure that all authors receive the relevant and time sensitive communications related to their manuscripts submission and are able to respond to requests from the journal for further information in a timely manner.

For additional information about this supplement, please contact the co-guest editors at Carson.Clark@va.gov.

Co-Guest Editors:

Said A. Ibrahim, MD, MPH, MBA
Perelman University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Co-Director, VA CHERP 

Michael J. Fine, MD, MSc
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Director, VA CHERP

Leonard Egede, MD, MS
Medical University of South Carolina
Director, VA HEROIC