Medical Ethics calls for papers / publications

Call for Reflections: Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life and Palliative Care

Journal Editor: Ellen L. Csikai, Ph.D
Section Editor: Mercedes Bern-Klug, PhD

We are pleased to be able to offer this opportunity to publish personal accounts of various aspects of social work in end-of-life and palliative care. We hope these entries in the journal will provide an insider’s look into everyday practice or give some inspiration as we assist individuals and families at this crucial time in life.

Description of Section:
Our work in providing end-of-life and palliative care affects us both personally and professionally. This new section of the journal is dedicated to using creative writing to give voice to the personal impact of end-of-life and palliative care social work in clinical practice, community organizing, policy practice, research, and education. Content, reflecting both the art and science of social work, is accepted in three forms: poetry, essays, and case studies.

Authors should submit only material that is original and that has not been previously published. In addition, please do not submit any material that is currently under consideration by another publication source. Do not disclose the identity of living persons without their written permission. If the content of your material can lead to the identification of a colleague, client, family member, or any person other than yourself, please follow your organization’s rules for the protection of human subjects, and indicate in your cover letter that your material conforms to your organization’s guidelines.

Poem
Poems from 7-15 lines in length are preferable, although longer poems will be considered.

Essay
Essays should be no longer than 1,400 words (about 5 pages double-spaced), although longer lengths may be considered. Essays can reflect the personal meaning-making experience of the author and tap into insights about, for example, ethical dilemmas, the importance of relationships, satisfaction or strain related to work in end-of-life and/or palliative care, gratitude, grief, humility, humor, and hope. The range of potential topics is deliberately broad. They may be written in the first person. Authors are encouraged to seek editorial feedback from a colleague or writing specialist before submitting material for consideration. No references or citations are expected.

Case Study
Case studies that do not exceed 1,400 words (about 5 pages double-spaced) are preferred although longer submissions will be considered. Case studies describe circumstances that are unusual or could be considered outside the experience of many readers by virtue of the characteristics of the client, his or her family system, the community, the social worker, local laws or regulations, or historical events (for example, a natural disaster like a flood, a hurricane, a traffic accident, or an organizational budget cut that affected care). Case studies present an issue that challenges the social worker, describes consideration and weighing of options, and presents the conclusion or clarifies that there was no conclusion. Authors are strongly encouraged to seek editorial feedback from a colleague or writing specialist before submitting material for consideration. References or citations should be included where appropriate, but are not required.

Submissions are online at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/wswe

With your submission please include a cover letter with full author(s) contact information and a statement that the author(s) has followed his/her organization’s IRB procedures as appropriate.

Call for Submissions: Neurology Clinical Practice

We are pleased to report that a separate online submission and review site for Neurology: Clinical Practice is now up and running (http://submit.cp.neurology.org). We eagerly encourage your contributions for consideration. Manuscripts submitted to this journal undergo the same thorough peer review as Neurology submissions. Please consult our Information for Authors (http://cp.neurology.org/site/misc/authCP.xhtml) for form, style, and submission requirements.

We have established some initial manuscript categories (below) and will expand these as needed. We welcome articles that are not strictly written to meet the specifications of the genres outlined below. All submissions should be geared directly to the practitioner (typically not primary research articles, but could be). Please include a discussion of issues that might be internationally pertinent, e.g., differences in other countries that might affect access and financial considerations, in addition to the medical issues, if they are relevant to the overall content of the article.

Clinical and Ethical Challenges

These articles explore problems faced by the practicing neurologist caring for a complex patient or addressing a challenging clinical problem or ethical dilemma.

Eye on Practice

These articles highlight issues related to office function, such as incorporation of electronic medical records, as well as discussions of health policy issues with special emphasis on changes in health care policy as they affect neurologists.

New Drugs and Devices

These articles apprise the practicing neurologist about new drugs and devices that will affect how they manage their patients' care.

Five New Things

These articles update practicing neurologists on emerging issues in various important fields on topics such as Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, gliomas, and stroke.

Cases

Utilizing 2 different formats, short (an interesting image and brief discussion) and long (a full case with longer discussion), these submissions are interesting and timely cases with important teaching points.

Expert Discussion

These articles are opinion pieces solidly grounded in clinical care and the evidence base (or, if not, identified as such). They are meant to inform the reader, stimulate thought, and prompt discussion about clinical care. These often would be in the form of pro vs con discussions.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Developing World Bioethics: Ethical Considerations in the Use of Anti-Retrovirals for HIV Prevention

Deadline for submissions: 31 July 2012

Guest Editors: Ronald Bayer, Quarraisha Abdool Karim

Evidence-based approaches to reducing sexual transmission of HIV has remained a major challenge in responding to the HIV pandemic. The past 18 months has witnessed a substantial shift in this landscape. Controlled trials have demonstrated that the treatment of individuals with HIV infection reduces the risk of viral transmission to uninfected sexual partners (treatment as prevention). Additional evidence suggests the possibility of providing anti-retroviral medications to uninfected individuals may reduce the risk of acquiring HIV infection from sexual partners (PrEP— Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis).

In view of scarce resources, there will inevitably be a need to prioritize who will get anti-retroviral drugs; those who are sick, those who can transmit HIV, those at risk for acquiring HIV. Research that focuses on the balance between efficiency and equity will be involved. Ethical frameworks for guiding decision-making at the clinical level as well as the macro social policy level will be essential.

Among the questions that will need to be discussed are:

i. What rights claims can uninfected persons make for access to ARVs for prophylactic purposes when millions across the globe are dying from AIDS because they cannot access ARV treatment?

ii. What moral claims can justify the provision of ARV therapy to those who do not yet clinically require treatment as a way of reducing the risks of HIV transmission?

iii. What normative issues are raised in making the determination that there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of either PrEP or Treatment for Prevention?

iv. How should the social and biological vulnerability of women to HIV infection inform discussion about the allocations of resources for either PrEP or treatment as prevention?

v. If there is a risk that PrEP will increase the risk of drug resistance and compromise treatment options for those already infected, what ethical questions must be confronted?

vi. What conceptions of procedural fairness and inclusiveness should shape decision making processes about these allocation decisions?

vii. How should current research findings inform the ethics of trial design?

viii. Given current evidence what moral issues involving the protection of research subjects should be considered in determining the extent of ancillary services and care that should be provided in prevention trials?

The editors welcome early discussion of brief proposals and/or abstracts by email to:

rb8@mail.cumc.columbia.edu or abdoolq2@ukzn.ac.za.

Upon submission authors should include full contact details and a few lines of autobiographical information in a separate electronic file. We discourage papers of more than 5000 words.

For further submission requirements, format and referencing style, refer to the Author Guidelines on the Developing World Bioethics website: http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/dewb

Manuscripts should be submitted to Developing World Bioethics online at:
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dwb.

Please ensure that you select manuscript type ‘Special Issue’ and state that it is for the ARV Special Issue.

Call for Papers on Criminalizing Contagion

The BMJ Group journals Sexually Transmitted Infections (impact factor 3.029) and the Journal of Medical Ethics (impact factor 1.391), in conjunction with academics at the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy (University of Manchester) and the Health Ethics and Law Network (University of Southampton), would like to publish a collection of articles on the criminalization of disease and sexually transmitted infections. We invite article contributions to be published as part of this themed collection.[1]

Themes

The use of criminal law to respond to infectious disease transmission has far-reaching implications for law, policy and practice. It presupposes co-operation between clinicians and criminal justice professionals, and that people who infect others can be effectively and fairly identified and brought to justice. There is a potentially difficult relationship between criminal justice and public health bodies, whose priorities do not necessarily coincide. We are interested in receiving papers of broad interest to an international readership of medical ethics scholars and practicing clinicians on any of the following topics:

Legislative and policy reform on disease and sexually transmitted infections
Health services and the police: privacy, state interference and human rights
Evidence and ethics: prosecuting ‘infectious’ personal behaviours
Clinicians and the courts: the role of health professionals and criminal justice
The aims of criminalization and public health: a compatibility problem?
International comparative studies on disease and criminalization: policy, practice and legal issues

Publication

1. Up to eight articles will published in a special section in an issue of Sexually Transmitted Infections in 2013.

2. Two articles will be published in a special section in an issue of Journal of Medical Ethics in 2013.

All articles will be blind peer reviewed according to each individual journal’s editorial policies. Final publication decisions will rest with the Editors in Chief: Professor Jackie Cassell (STI) and Professor Julian Savulescu (JME).

Important Dates

Please submit your article to either journal no later than December 14th 2012.

Submission Instructions

For Sexually Transmitted Infections:

Articles for STI should be a maximum of 2,500 words and submitted via the journal’s website: http://sti.bmj.com/. Please choose the special issue ‘Criminalizing Contagion’ during the submission process.

For Journal of Medical Ethics:

Articles for JME should be a maximum of 3,500 words, and submitted via the journal’s website: http://jme.bmj.com/. Please choose the special issue ‘Criminalizing Contagion’ during the submission process.

Further submission instructions are on the journals’ respective websites. If you would like to discuss any aspect of your submission, including possible topics and the journals involved, please contact the guest editors in the first instance: Dr David Gurnham (David.Gurnham@manchester.ac.uk), Dr Catherine Stanton (Catherine.Stanton@manchester.ac.uk) or Dr Hannah Quirk (Hannah.Quirk@manchester.ac.uk).

[1] Some of the contributors may also be invited to present their papers at one of three sessions of a proposed ESRC seminar series on the same topic, to be organised by the guest editors. If funding for the seminar series is awarded by the ESRC (in April 2012), they will take place in winter 2012/13 and summer 2013 (Southampton), and winter 2013/14 and summer 2014 (Manchester).