In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. - John Henry Newman

As we at the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice (JPHMP) are in full agreement with Cardinal Newman, it is my pleasure to announce a number of changes to the journal in our perpetual quest to maintain relevance in a changing world. Specifically, we are happy to announce 2 new article types and forthcoming author resources that we feel will be responsive to the scope of work relevant to JPHMP readers. The new article types will include the Practice Full Report and Systematic Review formats, which will join the Research Full Report, Research Brief Report, and the Practice Brief Report as the primary article formats utilized by the journal. The Practice Full Report is intended to complement the Practice Brief Report and Research Full Report formats and provide authors with a more appropriate format for reporting meaningful work that doesn't fall into the traditional Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) format utilized by the Research Full Report. We expect that articles published as a Practice Full Report will depict promising, large-scale policies and programs and include data describing the planning, implementation, and/or effectiveness of the policy or program. Manuscripts that lack these data, or that describe emerging but promising policies and practices, can still be submitted under the Practice Brief Report format.

The Systematic Review will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, which are fully endorsed by the journal to ensure consistent and transparent reporting of evaluations of interventions. We hope that this will provide an outlet for systematically reporting the results of reviews of community-based interventions or policy implementation of interest to the JPHMP readership. We expect that few articles will be published in JPHMP using the Systematic Review format, as it can be challenging to report a synthesis of existing studies in a manner that provides actionable advice rather than an esoteric summary of the current state of the science, but we acknowledge that exceptions exist that will be useful for policy makers and practitioners. However, authors should be very careful in their writing and reporting that the results are clearly described with their application in the forefront.

Finally, we will be rolling out a number of new resources that we hope will assist novice and experienced readers in preparing their manuscripts for submission to the JPHMP and other journals of interest. We have created a new Author Guidelines document that can be accessed via our Instructions for Authors page, which contains additional guidance and a number of checklists that will provide potential authors with a clearer description of the expected content for each article type, with links to supplementary resources. Furthermore, we are developing a series of annotated templates that potential authors can download to ensure proper formatting of their manuscripts. Finally, we are developing an interactive tutorial with support from the de Beaumont Foundation that will build upon the Scientific Writing Toolkit for Applied Epidemiologists developed in cooperation with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. This interactive tutorial will help potential authors develop their manuscripts through a series of interactive steps that will aid in demystifying the writing process and streamlining the process for busy professionals. It is our sincere hope that these new article formats, resources, and tools will improve the quantity and quality of submissions from the practice community and result in the publication of more articles with relevance to the practice of public health.