A Letter from the Editor

Abstract

The American Journal of Health Education has been serving the needs of Health Educators for almost five decades. Since 1978, surveys of the American Association of Health Education (AAHE) members have found AJHE to be a key benefit of AAHE membership (1,2). With the unification of AAHE and other several other national associations under the umbrella of AAHPERD, the continuation of AJHE was carefully examined. The examination focused on the continuation of AJHE as a publication in another health education membership organization, repurposing the journal, or discontinuation of AJHE. The results of these discussions resulted in AAHPERD's decision to continue to publish AJHE working with Taylor and Francis, a leading international academic publisher of more than 1,000 journals and around 1,800 new books each year, as its publisher. In March 2013, I stepped down as Editor of AJHE to allow AAHPERD to select a new editor to support AAHPERD's vision for AJHE. I agreed to continue as Editor while AAHPERD searched to identify a qualified permanent Editor. The AJHE collaboration with Taylor and Francis was proving successful in terms of yielding an incredibly rich pool of submissions and reaching new markets and now was not the time to lose continuity. At this point, I made a proposal to AAHPERD to continue as Editor of AJHE if I could implement two major changes; changes that I believed would enhance the focus of manuscripts published and enhance the review process. Based on over 30 years of experience in publishing and editing health education journals, and after consultation with the AJHE Board of Associate Editors, I proposed to focus the scope of AJHE to publish manuscripts related to the major chronic diseases and illnesses that impact population health (CVD, diabetes, COPD, cirrhosis, Alzheimer's/dementia, etc.) and the lifestyle behaviors associated with these chronic diseases (physical activity, nutrition/diet, tobacco use, weight management, self-management of chronic disease, emotional and social functioning, alcohol and other drug abuse, etc.). This change in focus would provide a more clear direction for AJHE. Please see the Instructions to Authors for more details on this change in focus. The second proposal I presented to AAHPERD was a change in the process of manuscript review. Rather than relying on an extensive list of reviewers, most of whom were AAHE members, I proposed to identify a list of more senior scholars with expertise in the major chronic diseases identified previously. These health professionals would serve as both reviewers and mentors and not only provide a critical assessment of each manuscript but would also provide comments on how the author could revise the manuscript, if appropriate, to yield a publishable work, even if AJHE was not interested in publishing the submission. …