Upload your healthpunk story by the 22nd June 2022 and possibly be featured in Volume 2.
With this Call for stories we invite healthcare students, clinicians, educators, researchers, professional representatives, policy-makers, and patients from around the world to send us your own stories of future healthcares in any language. The central task for authors is to write fictional stories located anytime in the future, in which the work of healthcare is deliberately focused on responding to social and ecological challenges and supporting better ways of living and being healthy together.
The need for transformative change across healthcare and society at large is now well recognized in light of diverse social, ecological and health crises. Out of an introductory public health module for first-year students in the Bachelor program in physiotherapy at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, healthpunk emerged as an approach to imagine diverse futures for more socially and ecologically responsible physiotherapy and healthcare in general.
Drawing on the philosophies and genres emerging around speculative fiction and diverse international futurism, we suggest healthpunk as an approach that can help us envision hopeful yet radically different possibilities for future healthcare beyond the parameters, logics, and politics of our siloed clinical environments and scopes of practice. We see this call for stories as an invitation to let go of established conventions and imagine otherwise healthcares filled with creativity and genuine care for the health of everyone we share this planet with.
Writing, submission, and review guidelines
We are especially looking for essays of fiction, although poems and other written formats are also acceptable. Stories should be between 500 and 2000 words, can be written by single or multiple authors, and submitted in any language. The use of references is possible but neither expected nor particularly encouraged.
All stories will be reviewed by an international editorial team with a strong emphasis on expressions of imagination, originality, creativity, and a sense of understanding of the complex interconnections between health, society, and ecology. Once the review process is completed, all authors will receive a message to inform them of the outcome and, where feasible, some feedback on their story.
A final selection of 8-10 stories written by healthcare students will be published in Healthpunk volume 2 alongside an introductory editorial and a range of invited commentaries from international contributors. Though we will not publish all of the stories we receive in OpenPhysio, we will work with authors to share their stories on a range of other platforms, including the websites of healthcare professional organizations, journals, professional interest groups, and other media.
We look forward to reading your story and conjuring up future healthcares with you. Your Healthpunk Vol 2 editorial team, Filip Maric, Liv J. Nikolaisen, Mahitsonge Nomusa Ntinga, and Jena Webb.