Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine, a publication of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Maryland, U.S., went through a redesign in early 2020, adding a special section to each issue to be able to investigate major topics.

“Public health is obviously such a diverse field, everything from injury to tobacco to malaria,” says Brian W. Simpson, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. “Rather than being limited to trying to cover everything in every issue, we wanted to at least have a special space at the beginning to really do a deep dive on important issues.”

And 2020 was full of important issues with the spread of COVID-19 and the focus on racism and public health.

In the fall of 2020, Simpson and his team decided to dedicate the special section to racism as a health crisis and brought in Keshia M. Pollack Porter, Vice Dean for Faculty and professor in health policy and management, as a guest editor to work on the issue. 

“Post George Floyd’s murder, we saw racism emerge again as a huge national focus. It had long been recognized in public health as an important issue—and then, with COVID-19 and the health disparities among people of color, it really came to the fore,” Simpson says. “And with the prioritization of recognizing and addressing racism as a public health crisis at the school, it all came together to make us want to really take this on in a significant way.”