Guest editors:  Felicity Thomas, University of Exeter Medical School, UK, Elaine Chase, UCL Institute of Education, UK and Peter Aggleton, Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney, Australia

Health Education Journal is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue of the journal on the topic of Health Education and Migration.

Research on health and migration has tended to focus on the barriers migrants face in accessing healthcare, and the poor health outcomes that often result from this. Within this field, programmes of health education are viewed as important mechanisms for facilitating migrant integration, and for enabling migrants to achieve the health literacy required to access appropriate healthcare and support.

However, migrants are not ‘empty vessels’ to be filled by Western expertise, but have their own beliefs, understandings and values, as well as their own forms of health literacy. Attempts to educate about health without fully recognising the existence of these perspectives will remain limited, and risk reinforcing homogenising and deficits-based frameworks for responding to the health care needs of diverse migrant groups.

Engaging with these concerns, this special issue invites papers that consider a full range of experiences of migrants as they engage with diverse forms of health education. Papers may focus on the experiences of different migrants groups as well as issues, policies and programmes that influence health education and health literacy among migrant populations.  Papers are likely to engage with:

• Health education needs of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees
• Health education policies and programmes for migrant groups
• Conceptualisations of ‘health literacy’ in different cultural contexts
• The role of the health sector in addressing migrants needs
• The role of schools, households, communities, transnational actors and networks in promoting health education and health literacy for migrant groups

Instructions for Submissions

The deadline for submission is 1 October 2017. Manuscripts should follow Health Education Journal‘s formatting guidelines, which are available on the journal homepage under Submit Paper http://journals.sagepub.com/home/hej/  Paper must not exceed 6,000 words in length, including references, figures and tables

If you would like to discuss your paper informally with one of the special issue editors, please contact either Felicity Thomas (f.thomas@exeter.ac.uk) or Elaine Chase (e.chase@ucl.ac.uk) in advance.

Please submit your paper through our online submission and review site. https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/asi/journal/health-education-journal#submission-guidelines

Please mark your paper clearly for consideration for inclusion in the Health Education and Migration special issue. All papers submitted will undergo the standard peer review process.

General enquiries about the journal can be emailed to the editor-in-chief, Peter Aggleton (p.aggleton@unsw.edu.au) or the journal administrator, Fiona Thirlwell (healtheducationjournal@gmail.com)