Greetings! I hope that you are well and safe and taking good care in the midst of this global pandemic response. I stepped into the Editor-in-Chief role for the journal on January 1 of this year. I am honored to have the opportunity to work with this team and to continue to develop the vision Dr Bettina Beech introduced to focus the journal on advancing health equity. In light of that, we have updated the aim and scope of the journal to reflect where we want to fit and contribute in the science.
Family & Community Health is a quarterly journal that aims to advance the science of understanding and addressing health inequities among marginalized and vulnerable populations. Despite many existing definitions of health inequity, what is common across them is that differences in risk, incidence, prevalence, treatment, or outcomes between defined populations are systematic, preventable, and unjust.
Family & Community Health publishes rigorous scholarly work from multiple disciplines using quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and systems science to elevate policy-relevant research and practice that acknowledge the roles of social networks, families, and communities in contextualizing health. The journal will consider theoretical, applied, data-driven, and translational research. The focus of this work needs to be on health inequities, their social and structural determinants, and strategies for intervening, all toward the ultimate goal of advancing health equity.
As we seek to recruit and publish research at the leading edge of the science in advancing health equity across multiple disciplines, I think you will recognize that in our articles moving forward. In addition, it is important that we establish a clear voice for the journal in what we are contributing. In this issue, you will notice a commentary from Dr. Chandra Ford, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health at the Jonathan & Karin Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California at Los Angeles. In it, she describes how the pandemic has highlighted the need for application of Critical Race Theory in the health sciences. Given that we only publish quarterly and the current dialogue regarding health equity evolves so rapidly, each issue of the journal going forward will include a commentary from a leading thinker in the field.
This quarter's issue offers both breadth and depth, examining both contributing factors and approaches to advancing equity across multiple marginalized populations. Focusing on social and structural determinants is increasingly important, as the current pandemic exposes the many existing faults within our social infrastructure. We have issued a special call for papers focused on equity and ethics in the COVID-19 response, and it is my sincere hope that we emerge from this time with a cle-arer understanding of and commitment to building the infrastructure and systems necessary to provide everyone the opportunity to thrive and thus affirm the humanity and value of all our neighbors. Be well and take good care of yourselves and each other.
-Monica L. Wendel, DrPH, MA
Editor