General

The Practical Health Psychology (PHP) blog aims to translate Health Psychology research into practice, PHP posts should clearly inform healthcare practitioners and public health workers how top-level scientific knowledge could be utilized in practice. Please keep this in mind and consult the checklist below when drafting your blog post.

Length

Your post should be written in English, be 500-750 words long, and include a maximum of five practical recommendations at the end (200-300 words recommendations for practice). These practical recommendations should be clear tips for practitioners to utilize the main points conveyed in the blog post. Total blog post with and recommendations should be not longer than 1,000 words.

Links, Not References

Please do not include a list of references with your post. Instead, please include links to the relevant sources embedded in the text of the blog post in the appropriate place so readers can easily click through to the full source. With this in mind, please use links to open access sources where possible, so that all can reach the relevant websites, reports, or open access articles.

Title and Images

Please provide a short, descriptive (and possibly catchy) title for your post to attract readers’ interest.  Also, please include (or suggest) an image that would help to illustrate the content of your post. These images will be displayed on the front page of the blog along with the title. In order to be published, images you submit must be licensed for use, so please make use of the several websites which offer free stock images when needed.

Opinion and Objectivity

Posts in the PHP blog are by invitation only, and as a contributor, you take sole responsibility for accuracy of the content of your post.  Feel free to express your own opinions but please also be objective in how you present the science and background to inform practice.

Checklist for your PHP blog post:

• Is it written in clear, easy-to-digest, jargon-free language?
• Does it include practical applied examples to aid understanding of the main messages?
• Would the average healthcare and/or health promotion practitioner find it useful?
• Does it showcase a unique contribution of health psychology or behavioural science research, which can help to improve practice in the health domain?
• Does it have a short, descriptive, catchy title?
• Have you suggested an image which will help illustrate the content of your post?
• Does it objectively present scientific evidence?
• Is the main text of your post less than 700 words?
• Does it conclude with a list of (up to 5) practical recommendations (max 200-300 words total)?
• Are links to relevant sources embedded in the text (instead of in a list of references)?

The Editorial Process

After receiving the first draft of your post, two members of our editorial board will review it to ensure that it contains a sufficient amount of practical examples and adheres to the checklist above.  You will then receive feedback on the first draft, which will include suggestions for additional content or rewrites to improve clarity for our readership. Upon receiving a revised draft from you, the handling editor will first check that the post has been sufficiently revised in light of the feedback given on the first draft, and if so, pass it on to the full editorial board, who will make a decision on acceptance. Further revisions will only be requested in rare cases, to help improve the post and better meet the needs of our readership.

Once your post has been approved by the editorial board, our excellent team of National Editors will translate it into 20 European languages, so that it can be widely distributed to practitioners across the world.  We will then use social media channels and national distribution lists to help get the word out about your post and to initiate discussions about what the post means for practitioners.