Epidemiological research guides delivery of patient care by informing and transforming clinical guidelines. Reciprocally, how clinicians document information from patients or their loved ones also determine the quality of data epidemiologists can use in research. Additionally, some patients’ health needs and some communities’ health interests are not well captured in observational studies and clinical trials when patient-subjects are lost-to-follow-up. Attrition of patient-subjects who are uninsured, underinsured, experience transportation or food insecurity, work multiple jobs, or live with complex chronic illnesses or disabilities, for example, creates gaps in epidemiological data capture that can generate clinical guidelines that do not apply well or completely to a full range of patients, and can exacerbate health inequity among marginalized, vulnerable patient groups. This theme issue investigates clinical and ethical complexity in clinical foundations of epidemiological research processes and in epidemiological sources of clinical guidelines for the delivery of optimal care for all patients.
We invite manuscripts for the January 2025 issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics® that help readers better consider and understand key intersections of epidemiology and health care practice We seek wide-ranging international and national perspectives about epidemiological practices that situate clinicians’ capacities to respond with care to diverse patients’ lived experiences.
Manuscript submission deadline has passed.
The AMA Journal of Ethics® invites original, English-language contributions for peer review consideration on the upcoming themes.