Dear Colleagues,

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has revealed societal vulnerabilities on a global level. COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have disproportionately affected low-income and marginalized communities, in part through chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and kidney, cardiovascular, and chronic lung diseases and in part through a global structure of inequity. The World Health Organization has outlined three principles of global action to address these inequities and their contribution to health, commonly called the social determinants of health, with the aim of achieving health equity within a generation. These include: i) improving the conditions of daily life—the circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age; ii) tackling the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources—the structural drivers of those conditions of daily life—globally, nationally, and locally; and iii) measuring the problem, evaluating action, expanding the knowledge base, developing a workforce that is trained in the social determinants of health, and raising public awareness about the social determinants of health.

In this spirit, we have created a Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health entitled “COVID-19 and Health Inequities: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions” to capture many of the exciting investigations spanning clinical, community-engaged, and policy research around COVID-19 and health inequities.

We invite investigators to contribute original research (empirical and theoretical) and systematic reviews that will further broaden the understanding of the cultural, economic, political, and social factors that contribute to, or may decrease COVID-19-related health disparities. Papers that include qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods are welcomed; papers that discuss the design, implementation, and evaluation of behavioral and policy interventions are encouraged. An important aspect of every manuscript selected for inclusion in the special issue will be the focus on social determinants of health disparities and/or applications of research findings reducing health disparities. Potential topics focusing on unique aspects of COVID-19 include but are not limited to:

• Papers that discuss, refine or test theoretical models specifying the relationship between social determinants, COVID-19 and health disparities;
• Papers that emphasize how an intersectional approach (e.g., race, gender, and social class) to COVID-19 in particular may help in advancing our general understanding of social determinants and health disparities;
• Papers that highlight how social determinants have implications for individual- (e.g., discrimination), place- (e.g., urbanicity) and community-oriented (e.g., segregation) factors contribute to COVID-19 related health disparities;
• Descriptions of epidemiological studies explicitly examining the interface between social determinants and COVID-19 and how this association may impact health disparities;
• Intervention studies that consider how social determinants of health affect COVID-19 health disparities;
• Modeling of COVID-19 that may help predict infection surges and/or future similar viral epidemics with an emphasis on how to use this to ensure equity in risk to exposure;
• Public health approaches that help to identify and reduce COVID-19-related disparities (e.g., race, gender, and social class);
• Health system approaches that might address potential disparate exposure among staff/employees and lessons learned in during this pandemic;
• Community engaged approaches to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on under resourced communities.

Prof. Dr. Keith Norris
Prof. Dr. Arleen F Brown
Dr. Roland J. Thorpe
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.