At its core, health marketing strives to inform, educate, and support individuals and communities through the development of products and services to adopt healthier behaviors and routines (Parkinson & Davey, Citation2023). Health marketing’s importance lies in its capacity to bridge the gap between clinical expertise and community understanding, promoting health literacy and the capability to participate in health decisions, and driving positive health outcomes (Schulz & Nakamoto, Citation2013). In the field of health marketing, the exchange of knowledge between academia and practitioners is vital for fostering innovation, improving healthcare outcomes, and driving positive societal impact as called for in the literature (Hammedi et al., Citation2024). One powerful avenue for this knowledge exchange is through the publication of practitioner papers—insights and experiences directly from the front lines of health marketing that appear in the public domain. However, to date, there is limited publication of practitioner papers in health marketing, social marketing and other behavior change disciplines (Sherring & Foote, Citation2023). While increasing the number of practitioner papers is important, numerous challenges exist, for example, finding trained reviewers who can balance academic rigor with real world relevance, the current focus in marketing journals on theoretical contribution that often limits practitioners’ ability to publish, and the requirement to include lengthy literature reviews which is often outside the scope of practitioners’ skill sets. In this editorial, we highlight the significance of practitioner papers in shaping the discourse on health marketing, explore how academics, including journal editors and reviewers, can actively contribute to facilitating their publication, and provide guidance for practitioners to publish their work. Finally, this editorial introduces Volume 41, Issue 1, highlighting two practitioner collaboration papers.