Digital vaccine certificates at the future of public health

Editor:
Luís Velez Lapão: NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 1 December 2023

Archives of Public Health is calling for submissions to our Collection on Digital vaccine certificates at the future of public health.

Vaccine certificates for meningitis and polio are widely used, and vaccine passports for yellow fever are required for travel to certain countries.

Physical certificates are widely accepted, whereas digital certificates have created unease but represent an opportunity to further develop digital public health, representing faster capacity to implement measures and to reach out for a larger amount of the population.

We invite research and commentaries on the current debate related to vaccine certification, certification technologies, access to vaccines and inequalities between communities, as well as proposed and in effect policies.

Image credit: © kokliang1981 / stock.adobe.com

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Meet the Editors

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Luís Velez Lapão: NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal

Luís Velez Lapão is a Professor with Habilitation of Digital Health at the NOVA University Lisbon. He is Head of the Digital & Smart Healthcare Laboratory and the Coordinator of the WHO Collaborating Center for Health Workforce Policy and Planning.

From 2018 to 2020, he Coordinated the Public Health Information Research at the Global Health and Tropical Medicine (GHTM) of the IHMT, after having led the Group of “Population Health, Policies and Services”, from 2015 to 2018.

His area of research is Digital Public Health and Information Management, with an emphasis on digital health capacity building, Design Science Research, the organization of digital health services and business models, in collaboration with hospitals and health centers, such as the development of digital public health surveillance, decision-making, foresight and Resilience & Preparedness. He is the principal investigator of several projects (eHOSPITAL4Future (EU4Health), Smart_Decision@Crisis(FCT); METHIS Digital Primary Care (CHRC/NMS); KERASITES (AICIB); INFODEMICS@PORTUGAL (WHO), PHIRI-H2020, as UNL partner).

He is also President of the General Council of the Lisbon Nursing School, since 2017; member of the Board of the Portuguese Telemedicine Association, Consultant of the European Commission on Digital Health, as well as a member of the Telemedicine Technical Group to support the Community of Speaking Countries Portuguesa (CPLP) and a National Defense Auditor since 2019.

Prof. Luís Velez Lapão published 8 book chapters and about 200 scientific articles: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luis_Lapao3

About the Collection

Archives of Public Health invites you to submit to our new collection on digital vaccination certificates as a look into the future of public health.

Vaccine certificates for meningitis and polio are widely used, and vaccine passports for yellow fever are required for travel to certain countries as they prevent, protect, and control the spread of disease. Individuals may be denied entry if they are unable to demonstrate their vaccination status.

Likewise, many countries, including European Union, for COVID-19 pandemic it was issued a vaccine passport. The impact and the innovation that resulted from it are still under debate by various institutions.

Physical certificates are widely accepted, whereas digital certificates have created unease but represent an opportunity to further develop digital public health, representing faster capacity to implement measures and to reach out for a larger amount of the population.

Both new technologies and ethical considerations must be explored to address existing inequalities and division, as it could, for example, make it difficult for people in low- and middle-income countries to meet the standards for compliance.

We invite research and commentaries on the current debate related to vaccine certification, certification technologies, access to vaccines and inequalities between communities, as well as proposed and in effect policies.

In particular, we are interested in research around domestic and international certifications, the impact of the interventions and of the technology, public health policy, and the future and longevity of digital vaccine certificates as a new field in digital public health.

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original research articles, case studies, commentaries. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Digital vaccine certificates at the future of public health" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.