Moving pictures: Highlights 2016 open for submissions

Abstract

Last autumn the image of a young Syrian boy lying dead on a Turkish beach highlighted the humanitarian plight of refugees and influenced public opinion. The photograph of Alan Kurdi spoke to people more powerfully than any words could have done. Photographs can move us, enrage us, challenge our ideas, and provoke us to action. Other pictures can bring joy and hope. In last year's Lancet Highlights photography competition, one of the winning images showed a 5-year-old boy in Zimbabwe looking in a mirror with rapt attention at his newly repaired cleft lip. These two pictures remind us how photographs capture a moment in a powerful and moving way. Images can highlight an important health issue and we invite readers to send us photographs for our annual photography competition, Highlights 2016. Whether your focus is local or global, we want you to send us photographs that surprise and move us by telling a story about health today. We are interested in photographs that capture any health issue in a thought-provoking way. As in previous years, The Lancet and The Lancet Global Health will run the competition together. Winning photographs will be published in The Lancet's final issue of 2016 and could be selected for the front cover of The Lancet Global Health. Each entry should be submitted with 300 accompanying words that put the image in context. Submissions should not have been previously published in print or online. If a person or patient is featured then you must obtain and keep written consent from the individual or, where this is not an option, their next of kin. Please complete the patient consent section of the author statements form while retaining copies of the signed forms. We also encourage you to submit any additional media to support your submission online, such as video or audio features. All photographs—colour or black and white—should be submitted through our online editorial submission system, along with the required text and any supporting material for online publication. Please select Lancet Photograph as the article type. If a digital camera is used please set it to the highest possible quality setting and submit images as JPEG files. If you are using a film camera please submit an 8 × 11 inch glossy print to The Lancet in the post. The entries will be judged by Lancet editors and there will be a £300 prize for winning entries. The deadline for entries is Nov 7, 2016. So share your photos with The Lancet and The Lancet Global Health: we look forward to looking at the stories you capture.