There are many ways in which the neighbourhoods where people live, work and recreate can have an impact on population health. Growing evidence suggests that residents who live in places with underprivileged social and physical environments are at higher risk of ill health and mortality. Despite the burgeoning literature on the topic, there have been calls to improve the evidence base about how neighbourhood environments influence population health. To strengthen and revitalize research of neighbourhood health effects, researchers and other professionals should anchor on robust quantitative and qualitative methods, and well-defined theoretical frameworks, to deal with the constraints and methodological challenges that may affect the quality of inferences.

We invite high quality Reviews (all types) and Policy Briefs on:
• Evidence on how neighbourhood environments - built (e.g. walkability, food environments), biophysical (e.g. air pollution, green space, climate) or social (e.g. deprivation, safety, social cohesion) - affect population health.
• Theories, models and frameworks underlying the associations between neighbourhood environment and population health.
• Causality challenges in the investigation about the neighbourhood effects on population health (e.g. exposure misclassification, residential self-selection bias, residual confounding).
• New methodological approaches in exposure measurement and causality assessment.
• Translation of scientific evidence to neighbourhood health improvement interventions – translation models and case-studies.
• Effectiveness of neighbourhood-based interventions.

The call is open for submission from January 15, 2022 until September 30, 2023.

PHR rules for double-blind peer review, article types, format and article processing charges (APC) apply. The GLOBEQUITY program of IJPH offers a limited number of waivers for first authors from low and middle income countries!

Articles are published in the online special issue usually 3 weeks after acceptance. Please submit the full manuscript using the submit link on the PHR website.

For questions please contact the PHR Editorial Office, phr@swisstph.ch.

We look forward to your submission!

Keywords: Neighbourhood environments, Built environment, Social environment, Biophysical environment, Population health