[APDIO] Call for Papers for Special Issue on Health Care Management Science for Underserved Populations

[Mónica Oliveira <monica.oliveira@tecnico.ulisboa.pt>]

Dear all

Please consider submitted to the above special issue.  More details at Call for Papers for Special Issue on Health Care Management Science for Underserved Populations | Health Care Management Science (springer.com) and below.  Deadline 3^rd February.

 

Best wishes

 

Alec

 

Alec Morton

University of Strathclyde and National University of Singapore

 

 

 

Call for Papers for Special Issue on Health Care Management Science for Underserved Populations 

 

The global health landscape is marked by persistent inequities and access barriers that disproportionately affect underserved populations. Despite the ambitious targets set by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains uneven. While some countries are on track to meet their under-5 mortality targets, a quarter of them are not, and a staggering 800 women still die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. This stark reality underscores the need for action to improve both access to healthcare and health equity. 

 

In the context of this special issue, we focus on “underserved populations” defined broadly as groups facing significant barriers to accessing healthcare services due to factors such as socioeconomic status, economic stability, geographic location, social and community context, age, gender, disability, or other characteristics. These populations may include low-income communities, rural populations, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and other marginalised groups. 

 

Management science, also known as operational research, applies analytical methods to improve decision-making and optimise systems in various domains. This special issue focuses on the discipline's application to addressing health inequities and expanding access to healthcare for underserved populations. Management science can play an important role in tackling these challenges at different levels by focusing on decision problems and providing tools for addressing both operations and strategy. 

 

Qualitative and quantitative operational research methods and tools can help us better understand systems involving healthcare services and underserved populations, elucidate barriers to access, and develop solutions to address stakeholder goals. These methods can provide valuable insights by incorporating key system constraints and considering the dynamics of patterns of behaviour over time. They can complement and enhance findings from other disciplines such as health economic evaluations, when assessing the implementation of health interventions. Methods like optimisation, simulation, qualitative system dynamics, and scenario analysis can capture health system constraints, predict potential unintended consequences and engage stakeholders through problem structuring methods and multi-criteria decision analysis. This engagement is particularly important for underserved populations, whose viewpoints are often underrepresented in addressing healthcare challenges. 

 

We welcome submissions on a wide range of topics related to the application of management science to improve healthcare access and outcomes for underserved populations. Potential areas of interest include, but are not limited to: 

 

• Qualitative operational problem structuring and research methods to understand the key barriers to access for an underserved populations 

• Optimising of resource location and routing of healthcare resources, such as point-of-care diagnostic technologies, vaccination centres, or emergency response vehicles, in low- and middle-income countries. 

• Modelling lean healthcare delivery models for low-resource settings. 

• Forecasting healthcare needs for hard-to-access populations. 

• Developing resource allocation models for fair distribution of funds. 

• Assessing the cost-effectiveness of targeted interventions for underserved populations using operational research/management science methods  

• Systems modelling approaches to understand poverty traps and pathways to improved health outcomes 

• Modelling to compare health systems strengthening strategies with vertical interventions 

• Developing models for prioritising healthcare funding that account for decision-maker objectives 

• Modelling to contextualise intervention implementation to underserved populations, 

 

 

The Management Science community has a unique opportunity to bring its perspective, knowledge, and ideas to address problems of access and equity in healthcare. We encourage also submissions also from related fields such as health-service research and implementation science as well as empirical research. Analyses should address operational-related questions with a core concern that is operational in nature.  

 

Authors submitting research from international partnerships between high-income countries and low- and/or middle-income countries or with underserved populations are required to include an author reflexivity statement in the Appendix to the manuscript. Please provide answers to the questions in Table 2, guided by the example in Appendix S1 of the Consensus statement on measures to promote equitable authorship in the publication of research from international partnerships (additional examples of reflexivity statements are available in appendices of articles such these articles by Lewis et al. 2022 and Cohen et al. 2022). Please also see the editorial on Using scientific authorship criteria as a tool for equitable inclusion in global health research. 

 

The manuscript submission deadline is Feb 3^rd, 2025. Accepted articles will be published online when their review and production process is complete. The special issue target publication date is February 2026. Articles that do not meet the SI timeline may be considered as regular journal submissions. Manuscripts should conform to the journal submission guidelines. Submissions should be made through the journal’s Editorial Manager site, and authors should select “SI: Underserved Populations” as the article type. 

 

The special issue will be guest edited by Sarang Deo (Indian School of Business), Itamar Megiddo (University of Strathclyde), Alec Morton (University of Strathclyde), Sheetal Silal (University of Cape Town). Queries about this special issue can be directed to Itamar.megiddo@strath.ac.uk.  

 

Professor Alec Morton

Strathclyde Business School

University of Strathclyde