Positioning Students for Success: 2024 Student Paper Contest Winners, Student Committee Research Skills-Building, and Release of 2025 Call for Papers

The journal offers rare opportunities for students to learn from our leadership and its rich pool of scholarly volunteers — associate editors, peer reviewers, and others — as well as from mentors at their respective institutions. Since launching the Student Paper Contest 13 years ago, the journal has welcomed submissions at all levels, ranging from high school and undergraduate students to masters, doctoral, and postdoctoral candidates. Student authors continue to demonstrate their expanding interest in timely public health topics that include the cost barrier of medications in a student-run free clinic, WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) benefits for purchase of fruits and vegetables and food security, colorectal cancer knowledge and screening among men, the use of geospatial hot spots and cold spots in cancer-related disparities in the US, factors associated with access to mental health services among children in the US, lifestyle intervention program for Spanish-speaking immigrants without health insurance, trends in gestational weight gain and prepregnancy obesity, and exploring the evidence of outpatient follow-up visits to reduce readmissions for cardiovascular health conditions. In the journal’s high school category, Meng and Wiznitzer, authors of “Factors Associated With Not Receiving Mental Health Services Among Children With a Mental Disorder in Early Childhood in the United States, 2021–2022,” reported findings about a strong link between health care factors and not receiving mental health services among children with a mental disorder in early childhood (2). Understanding the purpose and function of a respected peer-reviewed journal Understanding submission requirements for specific article types offered by a peer-reviewed journal (eg, format, word count, headings, manuscript style) Using the journal’s electronic management tracking system to submit an article Becoming familiar with the peer-review process and how to appropriately respond to comments and suggestions from the journal Recognizing key components of a scientific research publication (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods) Understanding how to appraise the quality of each component of a publication Assessing strengths and weaknesses of an article’s methods, statistical analyses, data reporting, findings, and conclusions Applying skills developed from critiquing articles as a reviewer to generate quality papers as an author Writing str