Letter to the Editor

Dear Editors,

I congratulate the Journal on its 25th anniversary issue. As one of its former editors, I took great interest in the Silver Anniversary issue and the article, “Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved: 25 Years of Service.” However, I’d like to take the opportunity to respectfully provide your readers with some clarity as to the level of work and commitment that the editorial staff devoted to volumes 6–12 (which spanned the years 1994–2001) and the nature of our collaboration with Sage Publications, Inc.

When I took on the mantle of editor in 1994 I found the Journal to be a highly respected publication with a very loyal following. Helmed by founding editor Kirk Johnson (now Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi), the Journal became a dynamic, scholarly publication that highlighted the work of dedicated individuals. The Journal had been conceived by members of the Institute on Health Care for the Poor and Underserved under the leadership of Dr. David Satcher (then President of Meharry Medical College), during an annual Institute conference. These members sought to create a vehicle that would engage researchers and clinicians from across the country working to address health disparities. Its development was spearheaded by Dr.Amy Cato, Director of the Institute from 1990–2002, who wrote the grant that secured funding. She remained a tireless advocate on the Journal’s behalf throughout her tenure with the new administration and Institute funders, which included the Health Services and Resources Administration and the Tennessee Department of Health.

Before his departure, Dr. Johnson astutely partnered with Sage Publications, Inc. (after an exhaustive appraisal of leading academic publishers) in order to ensure its continued circulation and financial security. It was a necessary business decision at the time—and a wise one. Sage was and continues to be a highly respected and well established international academic publisher with a dedicated STM division that produces a number of medical and public health titles. It is important to note that through this agreement the Institute on Health Care for the Poor and Underserved and the Journal contractually reserved and retained all administrative and editorial rights.* It was the sole responsibility of the editor in partnership with the Editorial Board to devise policy and guidelines, manage new manuscript selection (to ensure the Journal’s continued focus on domestic issues of health disparities and barriers to care), solicit peer-reviewers, prepare manuscripts for publication, and provide remote oversight of Sage production and marketing initiatives. As such, Sage did not acquire the Journal as much as enter into a contractual publishing agreement with the Institute—a very typical academic publishing model.

Notably, the Journal continued to be the official publication of Meharry Medical College. So, as I launched my inaugural issue with Volume 6, Number 1 1995 it was with a great sense of reverence for our parent institution—with which I had a personal connection of some 40 years beginning in 1960—as well as with eager anticipation of the unique opportunities beyond production that our affiliation with Sage introduced.

I recognized that it was my responsibility to maintain the Journal’s scientific integrity and rigorous approach as well as collegial interactions with authors. It was also evident to me that my task at hand was to focus on quickly and diligently increasing the Journal’s readership and to broaden its scope to address issues within and across underserved populations. I applied myself to cultivating an ever expanding cadre of peer reviewers from the disciplines of medicine, sociology, anthropology as well as public health. As I had anticipated, many of these reviewers now recognized the Journal as a viable vehicle for their research. Manuscript submissions quadrupled within the year and continued to grow exponentially. Our end-of-year list of peer reviewers—each listed by name and affiliation—grew from two columns to upwards of four pages. On balance, the Journal’s quantitative content grew along with qualitative articles from members working directly in the trenches. Its range of articles explored regional issues affecting Black, Hispanic, Native American and immigrant populations from rural, coastal...