Dear Colleagues,

The participation of people in decision-making processes that affect their health is a key feature in the Declaration of Alma-Ata (1978) and the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986). WHO supports participation in health programs as one of the main axes for the development of the Primary Health Care strategy (World Health Report 2008) and in reaching health system goals (WHO Health Systems Strategy 2007). According to WHO, participation can take on several different forms, from informing and consulting people and involving them in the design and development of health programs, up to empowering individuals and communities to control the key decisions that affect their health and wellbeing.

Since participation was evidenced as a key element for health policies and interventions, evidence on the impact of participation in the development and results of health programs has been growing. For example, under the MeSH term ‘Patient participation’ (introduced in 1978 as ‘patient involvement in the decision-making process in matters pertaining to health’), hundreds of systematic reviews and thousands of single studies have been published. The NICE guideline Community engagement: improving health and wellbeing and reducing health inequalities (NICE 2016) assess the best evidence supporting effective community engagement approaches to reduce health inequalities and ensure health and wellbeing, and provides recommendations regarding principles of good practice to make engagement more effective, collaborations and partnerships approaches to encourage participation, and community engagement as an integral part of health and wellbeing initiatives, among others. In work settings, research on participatory ergonomics programs is showing effectiveness in reducing symptoms, lost days of work, and claims in relation to musculoskeletal disorders of occupational origin, a major work-related disease burden.

More evidence is needed regarding the effectiveness, contexts, processes, barriers, and facilitators to the implementation of participatory health programs. This is the main interest for this Special Issue of the journal Medicina, and we encourage health researchers and practitioners to submit their studies on participation for health.

Manuscript Submission Information

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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. Medicina 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 1800 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.

• Patient participation
• Community participation
• Health services
• Public health
• Occupational health
• Community health services
• Evaluation research