Editorial

Welcome to the fifth issue of this volume of the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education.

There are five papers that bring a diverse mix of topics to this issue. The first paper is A qualitative exploration of interactions with natural environments among immigrant women in Norway by Lorentzen and Viken. It explores the role of nature in improving mental and physical health which is discussed in the context of improving female immigrant population health in Norway. They state that immigrant voices are typically not conveyed in research in the area of nature-connectedness in Norway or other comparable countries arguing the important role of context in transferability of findings in research concerning nature for health. The role of socioeconomic status in a community-based study of diabetes secondary prevention among African Americans is the second paper in which Silberberg et al focus on peer support and professional coaching for African Americans with Type 2 diabetes. They discuss the challenges of reaching socioeconomically diverse racial minority populations and attempting to address diverse needs that require tailored approaches in specific settings to achieve higher levels of health and wellbeing.

In the third article There’s an app for that: educational intervention to promote mobile health management app use in rural Ireland by Hawkins and Higgins, a pretest-posttest design was used to examine the effectiveness of educational sessions combined with ‘hands on’ demonstrations of mHealth apps with members of a small community in rural Ireland. They found this was an effective strategy to increase knowledge and remove common barriers in using health promotion apps, to empower individuals to improve their own health. The fourth paper is the Effect of breast self-examination training and follow-up program using the Health Belief Model on Turkish women’s knowledge, attitudes, and practices: A randomized controlled study by Yildirim and Akince. In their sample of 100 women from one region in Turkey, they found that the programmes increased their knowledge about breast health while enhancing their confidence in performing self-examinations.

Psychological capital and orientation to happiness as protective factors for coping among first year university students in South Africa acknowledges potential stressors for students adapting to the university environment, culture and academic activities in the final paper in this issue by Asante, Meyer-Weitz and Okafo. Their study highlights the association between optimism, hope and resilience with productive coping in the academic context and the need for constructive psychological resources to support first-year university students.

I continue to welcome submissions of original research contribution to the International Journal of Health Promotion and Education.