For much of the past year, the editors and editorial board of Health Services Research (HSR) have been refining goals and action items to identify and address structural racism at the journal. Today, I am pleased to announce that a report documenting those goals and action items is available online.
Accompanying the report is a shorter editorial that summarizes its contents. Both the report and editorial list our goals as follows:
- For HSR to be equitable and accessible to the entire health services research community — from editorial positions to reviewer roles to publication in our journal.
- In reviewing and publishing manuscripts, for HSR to be consistent, fair, and objective in how it handles “race” and “ethnicity” however they arise (e.g., as a control variable, a main focus, etc.).
- For HSR to be intentionally and transparently receptive to scholarship on structural racism as an underlying driver of inequities.
In addition, HSR has released today an open call for papers on topics in inequities due to marginalized social identities.
While the ideas in all three documents were shaped by the minds of many, I want to particularly thank HSR Senior Associate Editor Dr. Monica Peek for partnering with me in putting these ideas into the words that appear in them.
