Skip to main content

Community pharmacy and headache care

Edited by:

Professor Timothy J Steiner, PhD, FFPM, FRCP, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Damiana Scuteri, MsPharm, PhD, Università "Magna Græcia" di Catanzaro, Italy
Heba Bani Hani, RPh, MBA, The Migraine Pharmacist, Canada

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 1 February 2026
 

The Journal of Headache and Pain is calling for submissions to our Collection on "Community pharmacy and headache care". The collection may include reports (especially comparative studies) on current pharmacy practice (scope, responsibilities and regulatory and other restrictions) relevant to headache care in countries worldwide — especially, but not restricted to, low and lower-middle-income countries; studies of pharmacists' knowledge and understanding of headache disorders and their management; theoretically argued proposals for change that, through educational initiatives, expansion of community pharmacists' scope of practice or by other means, might relieve strained headache-care systems; and studies of workload-shifting in headache care from medical to community pharmacy services (economic evaluations, theoretical or empirical assessments of benefits versus harms, and reports of pilot implementations either in headache care or in other therapeutic areas that might be pathfinders for headache care).

Image credit: © Dragos Condrea/iStock/Gettyimages

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Well-Being.

Meet the Guest Editors

Back to top

Professor Timothy J Steiner, PhD, FFPM, FRCP, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Professor Steiner is an academic physician and specialist in headache medicine. He trained first in physiology, and then in medicine, at the University of London. Later he obtained Masters Degrees in law, in medical ethics and in business management. He has worked in the field of headache medicine for 40 years. He is past-President of the European Headache Federation and past-General Secretary of the International Headache Society. His principal research interests relate to public health aspects of headache. He is the founder of the UK-registered charity, Lifting The Burden, which operates in official relations with the World Health Organization. He is the architect and Director of the Global Campaign against Headache, which is conducted by Lifting The Burden as its sole activity.

Damiana Scuteri, MsPharm, PhD, Università "Magna Græcia" di Catanzaro, Italy

Damiana Scuteri is a RTD-B full time Researcher at the University “Magna Graecia” of Catanzaro. Her interests encompass basic, translational and clinical research homogeneously aimed at diagnostic and therapeutic innovation in syndromes characterized by pain (migraine pain, post-stroke) or associated with behavioral disorders during dementia and pain as triggers. Her research has been shared with international research groups and formed object of invited lectures at numerous International and National conferences, also being awarded for quality, innovation and technological transfer by Scientific Societies and Journals of national and international importance (SIF, SINS, SIROE, Toxins, etc..) and from business incubators (Start Cup Calabria, Entopan, PNI, etc). PI or coordinator of several projects that have obtained competitive funding. Author of more than 80 research articles (h-index = 23, Scopus) in indexed journals, she serves as section editor, guest editor or member of the editorial board for indexed journals and member of the Italian Societies of Pharmacology (SIF), Neuroscience (SINS), Neurological Rehabilitation (SIRN), Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) and Italian Society of Translational Research and Health Professions (SIRTEPS).

Heba Bani Hani, RPh, MBA, The Migraine Pharmacist, Canada

Heba Bani Hani is a Canadian pharmacist with a master’s degree in headache disorders from the University of Copenhagen. She is a visiting lecturer at the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Pharmacy. Heba has over two decades of experience in community & hospital patient care, with a focus on headache. This expertise led her to establish The Migraine Pharmacist, a practice that supports individuals living with migraine in Canada and provides pharmacists with education on headache management. In recognition of her contribution to pharmacy practice, Heba was awarded the 2023 Innovation in Pharmacy Award by the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy.

About the Collection

The Journal of Headache and Pain is calling for submissions to our Collection on "Community pharmacy and headache care". In the sustainable development goals (SDG) context of seeking universal health coverage, the expanding gap between the supply of specialized and primary providers of headache-related health care on the one hand and the care needs of the very large number of people affected by headache on the other is a formidable but not insoluble public-health challenge. Structured headache services provide a cost-effective framework for provision of care but may still be overwhelmed by demand. Community pharmacists are an underutilized resource, potentially well able to provide the solution. This collection aligns with UN SDG-3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages), and more specifically with SDG-3.8 (Achieve universal health coverage ..., access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines ... for all). The collection may include reports (especially comparative studies) on current pharmacy practice (scope, responsibilities and regulatory and other restrictions) relevant to headache care in countries worldwide — especially, but not restricted to, low and lower-middle-income countries; studies of pharmacists' knowledge and understanding of headache disorders and their management; theoretically argued proposals for change that, through educational initiatives, expansion of community pharmacists' scope of practice or by other means, might relieve strained headache-care systems; and studies of workload-shifting in headache care from medical to community pharmacy services (economic evaluations, theoretical or empirical assessments of benefits versus harms, and reports of pilot implementations either in headache care or in other therapeutic areas that might be pathfinders for headache care).

Image credit: © Dragos Condrea

  1. In the sustainable development goals (SDG) context of seeking universal health coverage, the expanding gap between the supply of specialized and primary health-care providers of headache-related health care an...

    Authors: Heba BaniHani, Christian Lampl, Antoinette MaassenvandenBrink, Faisal Mohammad Amin, Louise Ninett Carlsen, Gianluca Coppola, Christina Deligianni, Raquel Gil-Gouveia, Philip R. Holland, Andreas K. Husøy, Rigmor Jensen, Madalena Plácido, Uwe Reuter, Kristina Ryliškienė, Margarita Sanchez del Río, Henrik Winther Schytz…
    Citation: The Journal of Headache and Pain 2025 26:100
    Content type: Consensus Article Published on:

Submission Guidelines

Back to top

This Collection welcomes submission of research articles, reports and reviews. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. 

Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. Please, select the appropriate Collection title “Community pharmacy and headache care" under the “Details” tab during the submission stage.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.