July 2024: Health Equity Science and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Justin B. Moore

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Jul 2024

As we approach the heart of summer, bringing with it unpredictable storms across the US and hotter temperatures, we would like to bring your attention to a few articles of potential interest from the July/August issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice. The first article of note is a commentary from Ronald Valdiserri. In this perspective piece, Dr. Valdiserri argues that collective action is necessary to improve America’s public health system, and that this action should engage a diverse coalition of partners to form a social movement driven by a collective goal of health for all. His thoughts are timely and important to heed if we’re to improve the infrastructure, systems, and workforce required to ensure the health of our constituents.

The second article we’d like to bring your attention to is from Flanagan and co-authors. In this intriguing paper, the authors make a strong case for the inclusion of drinking water source and testing questions into electronic medical records. They argue that while EMR systems that capture individual environmental health risk factors are still rare, this practice could be foundational for other promising public health research, surveillance, and outreach opportunities relevant to environmental medicine.

In addition, we would like to call your attention to a special section on Health Equity Science. The Health Equity Science collection features an excellent article by Dwivedi and colleagues entitled “Embedding Health Equity Science at the Core of Public Health Practice.” In this commentary, the authors make a compelling case that Health Equity Science principles should inform all aspects of public health research and practice rather than being confined to a separate discipline. Other articles in this special section dive deeper into strategies to achieve this important goal.

Finally, we hope that you will explore a supplemental issue of the journal which accompanies the July/August issue focused on cardiovascular health promotion efforts across the country. This issue, sponsored by the National Network of Public Health institutes (NNPHI) and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), seeks to advance work in cardiovascular health by highlighting core strategy areas that include the expansion and strengthening of community-clinical linkages, clinical quality measures, and team-based care to improve cardiovascular health and disease mortality. The high-quality articles contained in the supplement will be of interest to anyone working to decrease the burden of cardiovascular disease in the populations they serve.

About the Author

Justin B. Moore: Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS, FACSM is a Professor in the Department of Implementation Science in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, USA. He holds joint appointments in the departments of Family & Community Medicine and Epidemiology & Prevention. Dr. Moore also serves as the Director of the Implementation Science Affinity Group within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Wake Forest University. He conducts community-engaged research focused on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based strategies for the promotion of healthy behaviors in underserved populations. He also conducts epidemiological research examining the determinants of health behaviors and related comorbidities across the lifespan. He serves as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice as an Associate Editor-in-Chief for the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. He previously served at the chair of the editorial board of the American Journal of Public Health. Dr. Moore is an active member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). He was named a fellow in the ACSM in 2010 and was a founding member of the Physical Activity Section of the APHA. He later served as the chair of the Physical Activity Section and as the Section’s representative on the APHA Governing Council. In 2017, he was named a fellow in the National Cancer Institute supported Mentored Training for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer program. He has served as a visiting scholar at Nanchang University, located in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, and Wuhan University, in Wuhan, Hubei, China. As a result of his research, he and his colleagues have published more than 170 peer-reviewed articles, and he has received funding as principal investigator for his work from the National Institutes of Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the de Beaumont Foundation, among others.