Earlier this week the editor of the Journal of Nepal Public Health Association informed us the journal had accepted our latest paper ‘Health System Strengthening: The Role of Public Health in Federal Nepal’ [1]. This article addresses some of the key Public Health approaches around the ongoing federalisation of the state of Nepal and the associated decentralisation processes in its health system. This is the third paper of our three-year project, which is UK-funded by the MRC, Wellcome Trust and DFID under the Health Systems Research Initiative and led by Dr. Julie Balen and Prof. Simon Rushton based at the University of Sheffield. The first two papers introduced our international research project ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’ [2], and focused on COVID-19 when examining the effects of changing Nepal’s constitution towards a federal republic on its health system [3].
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health Research)
References
- Sapkota, S., Panday, S., Wasti, S.P., Lee, A., Balen, J., van Teijlingen, E., Rushton, S., Subedi, M., Gautam, S., Karki, J., Adhikary, P., Marahatta, S., Simkhada, P. for the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2022) Health System Strengthening: The Role of Public Health in Federal Nepal, Journal of Nepal Public Health Association (forthcoming).
- Rushton, S., Pandey, S., van Teijlingen, E., Subedi, M., Balen, J., Karki, J., Simkhada, P. on behalf of the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2021) An Investigation into the Impact of Decentralization on the Health System of Nepal. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 7(1): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v7i1.43146
- Adhikary, P., Balen, J., Gautam, S., Ghimire S., Karki J.K., Lee A.C., Marahatta S.B., Pandey S., Pohl G., Ruston S., Sapkota S., Simkhada P.P., Subedi M., van Teijlingen E.R., on behalf of the NFHS Team. The COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: Emerging evidence on the effectiveness of action by, and cooperation between, different levels of government in a federal system. Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences. 2020; 3(3)




















Starting 1 April 2022, all BU corresponding authors will no longer need to pay the Article Processing Charge (APC) for publishing with PLOS Computational Biology, PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Genetics, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS ONE and PLOS Pathogens, due to the JISC PLOS flat fee agreement that Bournemouth University has signed up to.









In academic life rejection is the norm, for both journal articles and grant applications, the average academic is more likely to fail than to succeed at any time. This can also be true, although to a lesser extent, for applications to present at academic conferences. At the time of writing this blog (12 February 2022), I have 299 published papers listed on the databases SCOPUS. Of these nearly 300 papers only two papers ever were accepted on first submission as submitted. Most papers went through one or two rounds revision in the light of comments and critique offered by reviewers, and sometimes also additional feedback from the journal’s editor.












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