Multimorbidity, Polypharmacy, and Medication Appropriateness: Public Health Challenges and Research Priorities

Dear Colleagues,

Advances in Medicine and other sciences during the last four decades have contributed to an extraordinary rise in life expectancy. Healthcare models have been improved, offering more effective diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. The clinical profile of the population also changes with time; diseases previously known as “deadly” are becoming today preventable and treatable conditions, others are diagnosed earlier in life, and new ones emerge. Several factors participate in this evolution; many of them are in our hands, such as caring for the environment, adopting healthy habits, and appropriate use of drugs. Many people live with two or more chronic conditions (multimorbidity) and are treated with multiple drugs (polypharmacy); their number increases continuously in all ages and genders. This situation is becoming more and more challenging in the clinical setting and, in the era of big data and real-world evidence, it is a major priority for epidemiologic research.

The Special Issue “Multimorbidity, polypharmacy, and medication appropriateness: public health challenges and research priorities” of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health aims to cover the following important areas:

• Characterisation of multimorbidity, risk factors, use of healthcare services
• Drug utilisation, medication adherence, polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medication
• Multimorbidity trajectories, trends in polypharmacy
• Multimorbidity, polypharmacy, potentially inappropriate medication and their (synergistic) effects on health outcomes
• The role of big data, real-word evidence, and artificial intelligence in the clinical praxis and epidemiologic research regarding multimorbidity and polypharmacy

High-quality original papers and literature reviews that address one or more of the above areas are welcome for submission in this Special Issue.

Dr. Francisca González-Rubio
Dr. Ignatios Ioakeim-Skoufa
Dr. Mercedes Aza-Pascual-Salcedo
Dr. Harry H. X. Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.