Australian Health Promotion Association

The Health Promotion Journal of Australia aims to facilitate communication between researchers, practitioners and policymakers involved in health promotion activities. Preference is given to practical examples of policies, theories, strategies and programs that utilise educational, organisational, economic and/or environmental approaches to health promotion and their evaluation. We welcome papers or brief reports on programs, professional viewpoints, guidelines for practice or evaluation methodologies.

Papers should be 2,000-3,500 words in length (including the Abstract, but not the references) preferably with no more than six tables and/or illustrations and 40 references.

Brief reports are intended to expedite dissemination of information about the development and implementation of health promotion projects. This includes projects in the process of implementation or evaluation, ongoing or completed health promotion projects and smaller pilot demonstrations projects. It includes reports on local implementation of national strategies where particular problems or need for modification have arisen. Word count: 1,200 words, 2 tables and/or illustrations, and 20 references.

Letters to the editor provide an opportunity for discussion of Journal articles and for comment on matters of immediate public interest. They should be no more than 400 words, 1 table and 10 references.

Authors are required to submit their article online at: http://www.healthpromotion.org.au/journal/submit-an-article. An accompanying cover letter should include a brief description of the project and its relevance to health promotion, and state that the contents are the authors’ original work and that the paper has not been submitted for publication to another journal. Full contact details (email, post, phone and fax) should be supplied for the corresponding author.

A 200-250 word structured abstract should be presented under five headings: Issue addressed (why you conducted the program or project); Methods (what you did or, for brief reports, an outline of the project); Results (what happened); Conclusions (what you learnt from conducting the program or project); and So what? (the relevance of your findings to health promotion).

The style of the text should be consistent with the style guidelines in the Ausinfo Style Manual for Editors and Printers, 5th edn, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service; 1998. Spelling should comply with British conventions and the Macquarie Dictionary. Do not use acronyms unless defined. Double quotation marks should be used on quotations from speech or published works and any quotations exceeding 30 words should be set as a separate paragraph. Use single quotation marks for colloquial terms, slang or words not in general usage and italic (not underline) for emphasis.

Cite references by number in the text and list in order according to the Vancouver system. For example: 1. Author’s name and initial. Title of article. Health Promotion Journal of Australia 1997;(7):22-5. For further guidelines see the Ausinfo Style Manual for Editors and Printers (5th edn 1998), pages 170-171. If there are any more than six authors, list the first six and use et al. to denote others. Journal titles are required in full.

Tables and figures should be referenced in the text and included on separate sheets at the end of the article. Indicate in the text the desired position for placement of tables and figures. Please take particular care with submission of electronic graphics to ensure that they are of an appropriate format. Figures usually can be used from within a Word file; photographs and other illustrations must be supplied as high resolution files in their native format (e.g. TIF, EPS, JPG). If in doubt about the suitability of a format, contact the Journal administration office. As submissions are e-mailed to reviewers, please keep file sizes to a minimum.

1)        National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/ethics/human_research/index.htm), specifically the Sections ‘What is Research? (p7), ‘What is human research?’ (p8) and ’When is ethical review needed?’ (p8).

2)        Australasian Evaluation Society ‘Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Evaluations’ (http://www.aes.asn.au/)

3)        International Committee of Medical Journal Editors 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication' (http://www.icmje.org), particularly Section II – ‘Ethical Considerations in the Conduct and Reporting of Research’.

4)        When does quality assurance in health care require independent ethical review? (NHMRC 2003) http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/file/health_ethics/human/conduct/guidelines/e46.pdf 

The Journal requires that authors identify such interests. Authors who have been funded to carry out any aspects of the intervention they are writing about (e.g. to do an evaluation or conduct a survey) must specify this in the Acknowledgements section of the article.

Participation other than that of the authors may be acknowledged, but should be kept to a minimum. Please place these just before the references.

Manuscripts submitted to the journal should consist of original work not published previously and not currently submitted elsewhere. Each manuscript received will be acknowledged. Review comments will be sent to the nominated corresponding author. Accepted manuscripts will be sub-edited to conform to journal style and space constraints. Authors will be required to sign a copyright agreement. A PDF of the page proofs is sent to the corresponding author for approval. 

Correspondence, submissions and letters to the Editor via the website at: http://www.healthpromotion.org.au/journal/submit-an-article

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                National Office, Australian Health Promotion Association
                University of the Sunshine Coast
                Maroochydore DC Qld 4558, Australia
                Phone: +61 (0)7 5430 2873     Fax: +61 (0)7 5430 1276
                E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it