Dear John,

In 2021 we announced our commitment to advance health equity through research and practice at Health Affairs.

Our goals for the project, which began in 2020 and launched with funding from the Colorado Health Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, are to:

1. Ensure racial/ethnic diversity of journal authors and reviewers

2. Increase the quality and quantity of published content on racial health equity

3. Address our own biases as part of the publishing enterprise

4. Lead transformation in improving racial equity alongside other health-associated journals

Our plan to achieve these goals was based on three principles:

1. Equitable Participation

For a journal, equity begins with authors, reviewers, and editors.

Therefore, it is important to ensure diversity among these contributors based on race/ethnicity and other identifiers such as gender and affiliated academic institutions.

2. New Voices

Dominant voices in health policy and health services research are often of those who possess some aspect of power and privilege — even in the subject area of racial health equity.

To break this cycle, we must develop programming that incorporates research or program outcomes from institutions or community organizations that have historically not been well represented in scholarly publishing.

3. Introspection

For Health Affairs to lead in advancing equity, we must be introspective and understand our own biases that contribute inequities in scholarly publishing.

This can also be accomplished by communicating with other scholarly publishing enterprises, which may share similar biases and can share recommended solutions for addressing them.

"A Seat For All"

In a peer-reviewed article published in Learned Publishing, Director Of Health Equity Vabren Watts and others from the Health Affairs team shared our journey to advance racial equity in scholarly publishing of health policy and health services research.

This afternoon we published an update on Health Affairs Forefront about our progress since 2020 — what we have achieved and what we have learned.
Our hope is that by sharing our story, we might help your organization join us in this journey.

Please help us share this message with your networks and across social media.

If you’re interested in learning more about the project or how you can support our work, please get in touch at [email protected].

Thank you.

-
Your friends at Health Affairs

1. Racial bias, either unconscious or conscious, can be present in practices and procedures within scholarly publishing.

2. To address racial biases, enterprises within scholarly publishing can create a thoughtful and sustainable strategy to work to minimize such bias.

3. Success is set by an organization’s leadership and cannot be accomplished solely by one person or division focused on equity (for example, Health Equity Director or Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee).

4. Resources are required. Advancing and sustaining aspects of equity or health equity requires time and financial allocations. Hiring appropriate staff to lead and implement strategy is imperative.

5. Be prepared to accept critical feedback. Draw upon external experts in equity to help guide your strategy. Learn from your mistakes.

6. Make the journal's equity goals public as a mechanism for accountability.

7. Be open to modifying or appending your equity strategy. As some inequities are addressed, others may be exposed.

8. Showing is as important as telling.

9. Be intentional and inclusive to improve procedures and practices that provide equitable opportunities for all who engage with the publication.

10. Elevate the voices of historically excluded racial and ethnic groups, women, people with disability, LGBTQ+ population, and others who have been underrepresented.

About Health Affairs

Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.

Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.

Copyright © Project HOPE: The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
Health Affairs, 1220 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036, United States

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