Call for Papers: Health, Medicine, and Society

Waves is currently accepting submissions to its upcoming special issue: Health, Medicine and Society. The issue will feature work that humanizes the challenges of medical research, clinical practice, and public health and considers the complex social contexts of health and medicine. 

It is abundantly clear that health outcomes are determined by far more than genes. Sociodemographic factors—factors such as race, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, health insurance status, and living environments—have a powerful influence on our present and future health. 

While the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the many sources of health inequity worldwide, it has also catalyzed promising but challenging innovations to increase access to healthcare—the expansion of telehealth, the use of robotics for contactless delivery of PPE and medical equipment, the implementation of AI and VR platforms to identify patients’ risks for COVID.

We welcome submissions that unpack sources of health inequity as well as those that detail solutions. Primarily, we are interested in human responses to human problems and how we might best, collectively, find solutions to these issues. Submissions may be grounded in the medical sciences or demonstrate other disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives—e.g., in anthropology, psychology, history, political science, gender studies, geography, and public health.

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Structural health inequities and barriers

  • Medical racism and/or anti-racist medical praxis

  • LGBTQIA+-related medical bias

  • The relationship between clinical medicine and public health

  • Health policies such as mask or vaccine mandates

  • Innovations in healthcare provision and technology (such as AI)

To be considered for publication in the Health, Medicine, and Society issue of Waves, please send your project and accompanying writer’s memo in a single .docx file to wavesuj@gmail.com. Alternative media projects such as podcasts and video essays can be sent in a suitable format for your project (e.g., .mp3 or .mp4 files, YouTube links, etc.). For guidelines on submissions, please see our Submission Guidelines and Policies.

We will begin to publish projects selected for Health, Medicine, and Society on a rolling basis in January, 2022. Submissions will be accepted through April 25, 2022.