A Privilege and an Honor

We would like to take the opportunity of our first “From the Editors’ Desk” piece to introduce ourselves and to outline our priorities for JGIM. First, we want to acknowledge the support and offer our thanks to those that have helped us get here. Starting with the search committee, led by Patrick O’Connor, that selected us as JGIM’s new Editors-in-Chief, we hope to exceed your expectations. Thanks to SGIM’s Chief Executive Officer, Eric Bass, the JGIM Editorial Board Chair, Olveen Carrasquillo, and Communications Director, Francine Jetton, for their continued guidance along the way. Next, the outgoing editors—Steve Asch, Carol Bates, and Jeff Jackson—have been gracious throughout the transition and continue to provide us with invaluable advice from their experience. Finally, we extend our appreciation to managing editors, Jenni Clarkson and Rachel Roberts, for providing answers to our myriad questions and for their excellent support of the daily tasks at JGIM.

Each of us has been a SGIM member for many years, and we understand the importance of JGIM’s role to the Society. Joe Conigliaro has previously served as Editor-in-Chief of the SGIM Forum and is currently Division Chief and Vice Chair at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. His areas of expertise are in substance abuse research, health care disparities, quality, and patient safety. Lenny López previously chaired the national 2019 SGIM meeting and is currently chief of the academic hospitalist section at the San Francisco VA Medical Center at the University of California San Francisco, and his expertise is in health care disparities and social determinants of health. Mike Elnicki has previously served as an associate editor and as a member of the Editorial Board at JGIM. At the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, he is currently the Director of Assessment and of International Medical Education Programs. His expertise is in medical education.

Drs. Asch, Bates, and Jackson leave the Journal in a strong position and have made significant and positive changes during their tenure especially during the challenging COVID-19 pandemic. As we take on the role of Editors-in-Chief, we have outlined several priorities for JGIM under our stewardship.

1. First, we intend to send a strong message on anti-racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) via the voice of JGIM which is an important platform for advances in health care and medical education. In these troubled times, JGIM needs to reflect the stance of the SGIM membership in supporting DEI, anti-racism, and justice. Inequities in health care access and outcomes in health care need to be discussed openly, must be addressed, and cannot stand. JGIM builds on a strong legacy of publishing equity-focused research and we will continue to prioritize articles addressing DEI issues and we will continue to make structural changes at JGIM to ensure equity in the long term. In addition, we will continue ongoing focused efforts to diversify authorship, peer reviewers, associate editors, and invited editorial writers. We intend to produce a yearly DEI editorial to report progress in the field and report on JGIM’s progress toward increased diversity, equity, and inclusion. To that end, we are currently in the process of appointing a DEI Advocacy Team at the rank of associate editors. The DEI Advocate Team will help to promote and develop equity-focused metrics to track diversity in content and authorship and will also help adjudicate DEI concerns that may arise within JGIM.

2. Our second goal is to increase the international exposure of JGIM. Significant, high-quality research in general internal medicine is being performed internationally. General internists in countries outside the USA are often struggling with similar issues in providing clinical care, health policy, and medical education and conducting research. They frequently offer alternative views, different approaches, and applications to those issues. You only needed to be at the SGIM meeting in Aurora, Colorado, this year to see how diverse and global the membership has become. The trend in submissions to JGIM is already headed in this direction. In 2021, JGIM received submissions from 64 countries with 32% of submissions from outside the USA. Along with our publishers at Springer, we will be promoting open access submissions, which will make the content more accessible to all.

3. Third, given the shifts in publishing toward digital engagement and dissemination, we recognize that the face of JGIM has become JGIM’s website and that the JGIM web page and use of social media need to be updated. We look forward to working with both SGIM and our publishers at Springer Nature to develop an engaging, interactive platform that meets our readership’s needs. We have already onboarded Charlie Wray and his team as digital media associate editors. They have a clear plan to make the web page more integrated and interactive and to organize our approach to social media. This process will include adding unfolding clinical cases that test clinical reasoning skills, rich clinical images, visual abstracts of published articles, digital journal clubs, and online topic discussions.

JGIM is an important part of being an SGIM member. It is our voice and it is where we look for innovation in our field. We are committed to building on the work of prior Editors-in-Chiefs. We are enthusiastic and are looking forward to our new role. We expect, over the next several years, to use JGIM to advance issues that are important to SGIM specifically and to general internal medicine overall. We welcome your support, input, and ideas in continuing to advance the Society’s flagship journal.

Declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest.