Submission Guidelines

The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law seeks to publish original research and commentary on the initiation, formulation, implementation, and impacts of health policy; the political influences on and consequences of health care policy, public health policy, and health reform; and the relations between government and health. Our audience is broad and interdisciplinary; thus, we expect manuscripts to speak to readers both adjacent to and distant from authors’ native disciplines. We welcome submissions from political scientists, economists, legal scholars, sociologists, health services and public health researchers, and others, as long as the work exhibits intellectual rigor, scholarly depth, accessible writing, and relevance beyond next week’s headlines.

Authors may submit their work to JHPPL’s main section or one of its special sections (more below). All submissions to JHPPL are prereviewed by an editor. If the editor decides to move an article forward, it undergoes double-blind peer review. Decisions whether to move an article forward are made within a week; for manuscripts sent out for review, our average turnaround time from initial submission to first decision is about two months.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions.

General Specifications

• Anonymized manuscript
• Microsoft Word file
• File name should be article short title (no author names)
• Times New Roman
• 12-pt. font
• Double-spaced
• Page numbers

Documentation

JHPPL follows The Chicago Manual of Style’s author-date style for in-text citations and references with some key exceptions. Before formatting your references, please consult the examples below as well as the JHPPL style sheet, which includes Duke University Press journals’ documentation requirements and JHPPL’s exceptions.

Examples

In-Text Citation

These increases in coverage reduced health care access disparities by income and race/ethnicity (Griffith et al. 2020; Kominski, Nonzee, and Sorensen 2017; Lipton, Decker, and Sommers 2019).

Reference List

Anderson, David, and Paul Shafer. 2019. “The Trump Effect: Postinauguration Changes in Marketplace Enrollment.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 44, no. 5: 715–36.
KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). 2018. “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll—January 2018: The Public’s Priorities and Next Steps for the Affordable Care Act.” January. files.kff.org/attachment/Topline-Kaiser-Health-Tracking-Poll%E2%80%93January-2018.
Pear, Robert, and Thomas Kaplan. 2017. “Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No.” New York Times, July 27. www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/obamacare-partial-repeal-senate-republicans-revolt.html.

Article Types

Commentaries

We consider shorter (~1,500–3,500 words) essays on topics in health politics, policy, and law. Although commentaries may address current events, they should hold broader relevance. Abstracts (200 words max) for commentaries should be unstructured.

Original Research

Research articles should offer novel theoretical and/or empirical insights, using whatever approach is most appropriate to the task: quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Our typical word limit for original research articles is 8,000 words, though we will consider longer submissions.

Research articles should feature a structured abstract (200 words max) with the following headings:

Context: [An explanation of the article’s background, objectives, and salience for policy and research.]
Methods: [A description of the procedures used to obtain and analyze data and/or research materials.]
Findings: [A summary of the results from the analyses.]
Conclusions: [A summary of the findings’ implications for policy, practice, and future research.]

Special Section Submissions

Tracking Health Reform

Articles that appear in “Tracking Health Reform” provide useful information for practitioners, stakeholders, and academics involved in national- and state-level health reform legislation, regulation, implementation, and policy evaluation in the United States. The section typically publishes shorter papers (4,000–4,500 words) that tend to be qualitative (often case analyses) and widely accessible to practitioner, journalistic, and academic readers. Abstracts (200 words max) should be unstructured.

“Tracking Health Reform” is edited by Heather Howard (Princeton University) and Frank J. Thompson (Rutgers University).

Books

JHPPL publishes reviews of recent books in the field. To propose a review or review essay, please contact Andrew Kelly at [email protected]. Review copies should be sent to Andrew Kelly, Department of Public Health, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd., Student and Faculty Services Bldg., Fifth Floor, Room 502, Hayward, CA 94542.

We do not consider unsolicited book reviews.

Submission Instructions

Please visit https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-jhppl. If this is your first time using our ScholarOne site, please register by clicking on “Create an Account” from the Log In page. Once you have registered, log in and click the “Author” tab and select “Start New Submission.”

If you have difficulty registering or submitting your manuscript, please contact us at [email protected].