This is to invite any editors of journals participating in HIFA to join us in publishing an editorial on health and climate change.
Last year, over 200 leading health journals around the world published an editorial on health and climate change before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP)[1]. COP27 will be held in Egypt in November 2022, and so the focus this year will be very much on Africa. The new editorial has been put together by a group including 17 editors of leading African journals.
Ahead of this meeting, health journal editors from around the world want to call for urgent action to ensure that this will be the COP that finally delivers climate justice for Africa and other vulnerable countries. This is essential not just for the health of those countries, but for the health of the whole world. Africa has suffered disproportionately although it has done little to cause the crisis. Moreover, despite the efforts of many, health professionals have not been a leading voice in the debate on climate change and environmental destruction.
So we invite all journal editors to join this effort and to publish the editorial in health and biomedical journals.
The deadline for joining is 7 October. Publication of the editorial should take place between 19 October and 31 December.
The early list of international journals committing to publish the editorial includes the BMJ, Lancet, Medical Journal of Australia, National Medical Journal of India, and New England Journal of Medicine. We are aiming for a truly unprecedented act of collective public speech.
Journal editors interested in participating should contact me at chris.zielinski@ukhealthalliance.org
(Invitation signed by Richard Smith, Lukoye Atwoli, Laurie Laybourn-Langton and Chris Zielinski on behalf of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change)
Chris Zielinski
Centre for Global Health, University of Winchester, UK and
Vice President, World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)
Blogs;
http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com
and
http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com
Publications:
http://www.researchgate.net and
https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/
HIFA profile: Chris Zielinski: As a Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at the Centre for Global Health, University of Winchester, Chris leads the Partnerships in Health Information (Phi) programme, which supports knowledge development and brokers healthcare information exchanges of all kinds. He is the elected Vice President (and President-in-Waiting) of the World Association of Medical Editors. Chris has held senior positions in publishing and knowledge management with WHO in Brazzaville, Geneva, Cairo and New Delhi, with FAO in Rome, ILO in Geneva, and UNIDO in Vienna. He served on WHO's Ethical Review Committee, and was an originator of the African Health Observatory. He also spent three years in London as Chief Executive of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. Chris has been a director of the UK Copyright Licensing Agency, Educational Recording Agency, and International Association of Audiovisual Writers and Directors. He has served on the boards of several NGOs and ethics groupings (information and computer ethics and bioethics). chris AT chriszielinski.com. His publications are at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chris-Zielinski and https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/ and his blogs are http://ziggytheblue.wordrpress.com and https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ziggytheblue
