Dear Colleagues,

What a great first year for Women’s Healthcare: A Clinical Journal for NPs! Gay Johnson, our NPWH CEO, established the journal to provide you, our readers, with comprehensive, timely, useful information to empower you to set a new standard for women’s healthcare. Gay created her NPWH news &  updates column as one more avenue to keep you  informed about what the association is doing to ensure the provision of quality healthcare for women by nurse practitioners.

We have covered a wide variety of topics in the journal, including breast cancer, cardiovascular disease prevention, contraception, depression in adolescents, menopause, ovarian cancer, sexual assault, sexual dysfunction, and vulvar dermatoses. In each issue, one of these topics is developed as a feature article for continuing education credit. We also have a great variety of departments, including Assessment & management, Commentary, Clinical resources, and Patient education. Through her Policy & practice points column, Sue Kendig, NPWH Directorof Policy, keeps us up to date about issues such as the Affordable Care Act, the Consensus Model, and the concept that women’s health is more than just an annual event (i.e., the yearly well-woman visit).

Here are ways for you, our readers, to get involved with the journal:

Write an article: Based on what readers tell us in surveys, we have set a goal to expand the number of practical, evidence-based articles that NPs providing healthcare for women will find interesting, illuminating, and relevant in everyday practice. We especially invite submission of manuscripts that provide (1) updates on clinical guidelines, (2) case studies on complex health situations, (3) innovative strategies for teaching and learning clinical procedures and skills, or (4) tips on the business aspects of clinical practice. Because we want to offer more articles that are both topical and brief, we have updated our author guidelines—available on our journal website at www.npwomenshealthcare.com— to provide prospective authors with information about how to structure articles that are shorter than those reporting on research studies or reviewing the literature.

Serve as a peer reviewer: We have placed our peer reviewer forms on the journal website to help authors better understand the criteria used for manuscript review. But you may also want to look at these forms to see if you are interested in serving as a peer reviewer. You need not have had an article published or work in an academic setting in order to serve as a peer reviewer, although we definitely appreciate this experience. We are always looking for NPs who are experts in the clinical setting to review manuscripts with an eye on the usefulness and applicability of the information in daily practice. Our peer reviewers are crucial to ensure the integrity and quality of the journal.

On that note, thank you to our year 1 peer reviewers!

I want to express a special thank you to the following individuals, who reviewed manuscripts submitted during our first year of publication:

• Kelly Ackerson • Elizabeth Heavey

• Helen Carcio • Anne Moore

• Melanie Deal • Suzy Reiter

• Brooke Faught • Kerri Schuiling

• Aimee Chism Holland • Carolyn Sutton

A call to action!

I know that our readers represent a wealth of knowledge and expertise worth sharing. If you would like to discuss a potential women’s health topic for an article and/or are interested in serving as a peer reviewer, please contact Dory Greene, our Managing Editor, at dgreene@healthcommedia.com, or me at info@healthcommedia.com.

I look forward to continuing to serve as Editor-in- Chief of Women’s Healthcare: A Clinical Journal for NPs and to hearing from you about what you want to see in upcoming issues.

Beth Kelsey, EdD, APRN, WHNP-BC