International Public Health Journal

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Professor Joav Merrick, MD, MMedSci, DMSc
Director, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Israel
Professor of Pediatrics, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel
Kentucky Children’s Hospital, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Professor of Public Health, School of Public Health, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
E-mail: jmerrick@internet-zahav.net
Homepage: www.jmerrick50.googlepages.com/home

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Mohammed Morad, MD, FRCP(Edinburgh), MRCPS(Glasgow), Professor, Clalit Health Services and Division of Community Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
E-mail: Morad62@gmail.com

EDITORIAL BOARD

Daniel Chemtob, MD, MPH, DEA, Director, Department of Tuberculosis and AIDS, Ministry of Health, Jerusalem, Israel

Itamar Grotto, MD, MPH, PhD, Professor and Director, Public Health Services, Jerusalem, Israel

Morten Grønbæk, MD, PhD, DMSc, Professor, Centre for Alcohol Research and Director of Research, National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

Joan Earle Hahn, PhD, RN/APRN, CGNP, CGCNS, CNL, CDDN, Advanced Practice Nurse Consultant, Aging and Disability, New Hampshire, USA

Bruce David Kirkcaldy, MA, PhD, FBPsS, Director, International Centre for the Study of Occupational and Mental Health, Düsseldorf, Germany

Professor Lucie Laflamme, MSc, PhD, Chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Division of International Health, Stockholm, Sweden

Bengt Lindström, MD, PhD, DrPH, Professor, Department of Public Health and Nursing, NTNU-Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

John R Lutzker, PhD, Professor of Public Health, Director, Center for Healthy Development SafeCare/UCEDD Centers, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Frank Mo, PhD, MD, Medical Research Scientist, Chronic Disease Management Division, Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario Canada

Professor Hatim A Omar, MD, Director, Division of Adolescent Medicine, Kentucky Children’s Hospital, University of Kentucky Lexington, Kentucky, USA

Teodor T Postolache, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

I Leslie Rubin, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Morehouse School of Medicine, Co-director, Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Unit (PEHSU), Department of Pediatrics, Emory University, Medical Director, Developmental Pediatric Specialists, Founder Emeritus, Innovative Solutions for Disadvantage and Disability (ISDD), Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Patricia Schofield, RGN, PhD, PGDipEd, DipN, Professor and Deputy Dean for Research and Income Generation, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education, Anglia Ruskin University, London, United Kingdom

Daniel TL Shek, PhD, FHKPS, BBS, SBS, JP, Associate Vice President (Undergraduate Programme) and Chair Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China

Professor Seter Siziya, BA(Ed), MSc, PhD, DLSHTM, CStat, CSci, FRSS, Michael Chilufya Sata School of Medicine, Copperbelt University, Ndola, Zambia

International Public Health Journal is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes four issues per year. The journal is owned and operated by Nova Science Publishers and funded entirely by subscription revenue and author-optional publication services.

There is no charge to submit your article and have it published in the journal. Nova offers a number of optional publication services that carry fees, but authors are not required to select these services, and the services won’t be offered until after acceptance of the articles. These services include Open Access, color printing, article offprints, discounted print copies of the journal issue, and licenses for use of the published articles.

Submission of an article implies that the authors will assign the copyright to Nova if their article is accepted for publication. A standard Copyright Transfer Form will be provided to the Corresponding Author of each article during the page proof stage of production.

Authors will receive a complimentary PDF of the full final issue and a complimentary PDF of his or her final article upon publication.

Authors may deposit and display the proofed versions of their articles in and on their personal non-commercial and affiliate non-commercial repositories and websites at any time. The same may be done with their final published articles only after a period of one year has elapsed from the day of publication.

Manuscript Submissions
Before submitting your article, please read the complete notes and instructions below to ensure that you understand Nova’s manuscript requirements and publication procedures and that you are in compliance with the ethical standards rightfully set forth by Nova, the publishing industry, and the scientific community.

Manuscript submissions, books for review, and correspondence should be submitted by e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Joav Merrick.

All abstracts and articles must be written in English with references in standard Roman script.

It is understood that articles submitted to the journal have not been submitted elsewhere for simultaneous publication consideration and have not been previously published, in whole or in part, unless the new article is an expansion of the original, in which case full transparency of the re-used portions must be provided.

Manuscript Preparation
Submissions should include the following items as separate files.

- Anonymized Manuscript
- Title Page

Anonymized Manuscript
The manuscript should be typed in Times New Roman 12-point font and have the following components in numbered order and each beginning on a new page. The text should be under the headings, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, References, Tables, and Figures. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and should incorporate background, objective, study group, methods, results, and conclusions. At least three key words should appear under the abstract.

Please remove any identifying information, such as authors' names or affiliations, from your manuscript before submission. As well as removing names and affiliations under the title within the manuscript, other steps need to be taken to ensure the manuscript is correctly prepared for double blind peer review. The key points to consider are:

Make sure that figures and tables do not contain any reference to author affiliations.

Choose file names with care, and ensure that the file’s “properties” are also anonymised. If you are using Office 2007 or later, consider using the Document Inspector Tool prior to submission.

Title Page
The Title Page will remain separate from the manuscript throughout the peer-review process and will not be sent to the reviewers. The Title Page should include:

- A concise and informative title
- All authors' complete names with academic degrees and complete affiliations
- A complete address for the corresponding author, including an e-mail address

If you have variations of the title that you would like Nova to use as the Running Head, please mark that at the beginning of the article.

Illustrations
All diagrams, photographs, illustrations, and charts (not tables) should be referred to in the text as Figures, and they should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. These figures must be supplied as separate electronic files named in the format in which they were created, and they must be one of the following types: tiff, bitmap, jpeg, gif, ppt, psd, png, or eps. The resolution of these figures must be at least 300 dpi and of good contrast. Please use patterning instead of colors for all graphs and charts when possible. Each Figure should include a title and short description.

Figures must also be placed inside or at the end of the manuscript. If scanned images are used, please retain the original hard copy of the figure for possible transmission to Nova Science Publishers. If previously published figures are used, written permission from the copyright holders must be obtained and submitted along with the text indicating the copyright holder’s citation instructions. Such permissions must grant unrestricted use.

References
All references should adhere to the Vancouver Reference Style, as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors. A maximum of 25 references should be used for articles, 40 for review articles, and 5 for case reports. They should be cited consecutively (enclosing the number in parentheses) in the text and listed in the same numerical order at the end of the paper.

Peer-Review
Blind peer-review and publication decision are carried out and made by the Editor-in-Chief in cooperation with the Editorial Board.

Publication Ethics
Nova is committed to maintaining trust in the journal, the value of authorship, and the integrity of science. Authors should be eager to help us maintain these standards. The following guidelines are provided to help authors avoid the appearance of ethical misconduct in their research and to help ensure adherence to the best practices set forth by national and international professional and regulatory bodies.

Plagiarism is a blight on the scientific community and a crime. The unauthorized use or close imitation of another’s language, text, data, ideas, or theories is prohibited. In all instances of authorized use, full credit to and representation of the original author’s work must be provided. It is the authors’ responsibility to secure permission for the use of copyrighted material.

The journal will investigate all reports and suspicions of plagiarism. Authors suspected of plagiaristic misconduct will be contacted and given the opportunity to prove the validity of their work and refute the allegations. All instances of proven plagiarism will be reported to the Publisher, the editorial office, the author’s institute, and other governing bodies as necessary. Plagiarized articles already accepted for publication will be cancelled, and plagiarized articles that have already been published will be retracted and denounced in a public erratum.

It is important that all authors and organizations where the research has been carried out have consented to the work’s submission and that all authors have significantly contributed.

In order to establish transparency in research, authors should be sure to provide statements on the following items.

1) Information regarding the source(s) of the work’s funding;
2) All financial and non-financial potential conflicts of interest;
3) A statement of informed consent for all studies that involve human participants;
4) A statements of human rights for all studies that involve human participants;
5) A statement on the humane treatment and proper welfare of all animals involved in the study.

The appropriate statements are provided below. They should be included in the article’s text in a section titled Ethical Compliance. This section should immediately precede the References section.

1) Sources of Funding
Please provide the names of all funding agencies, research grants, and grant numbers.

Statement
Source of Funding: This study was funded by ____________________.

2) Potential Conflicts of Interest
Authors are required to disclose all personal and professional relationships and interests that can be viewed as potentially imparting bias in the work. Readers are entitled to this information and to their own conclusions and perceptions of conflict. Potential conflicts could be financial relationships, employment, sponsorships, public holdings, competing interests, spousal interests, personal relationships, personal beliefs, etc.

Statement
a) Disclosure of Interest: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

b) Disclosure of Interest:

3) Informed Consent
Study participants have the right to decide how the identifiable personal information gathered on them is used. It is essential that all participants (or guardians) give their written informed consent to participate in the study and its subsequent publication.

Statement
Informed consent was obtained from each individual participant involved in this study.

4) Statement of Human Rights
The wellbeing of human subjects takes precedence over the interests of science. If a study involves human participants, authors should include a statement that the study was conducted in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments.

Statement
This study was conducted in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments.

5) Statement of Animal Welfare
All studies that involve animals should contain a statement that the study and its procedures have been approved by their affiliate institutional research ethics committee.

Statement
All animals involved in this study were treated in accordance with the ethical standards set forth by the institution at which the study was conducted.

Committee on Publication Ethics
Nova and its editors follow the Codes of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). These codes and guidelines are valuable instructions that ensure transparency and fairness in research and publishing. The single document provides steps for submissions, peer-review, confidentiality, the creation and maintenance of editorial boards, editorial responsibilities and decision-making, communication policy, appeal procedures, handling complaints and instances of misconduct, quality assurance, publishing corrections and retractions, adherence to national and international ethics guidelines, and many more aspects of the publication process.

The COPE Codes of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines can be read at the link below. We recommend your familiarity with them while you publish with Nova and any other scientific publisher.
https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct

If you notice any ethical misconduct in Nova’s publications, please contact us.

Publisher’s Office
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