Enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in Families, Systems, & Health.

Developing a behavioral health workforce for team based care.

“…We were gratified to find that a majority of the submitted articles incorporated considerations around equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). EDI in publishing practices is a particular emphasis in this journal (see Shepardson & Polaha, 2022), and we were glad to advance those aims with this issue. Moreover, training a diverse workforce, providing equitable and inclusive training opportunities, and training a workforce that is sensitive to EDI and prepared to address EDI as clinicians and health care leaders is imperative.…”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Evolving into belonging, dignity, and justice.

“…They reflected deeply on their values; identified intentional and unintentional errors in their policies and choices; and moved in ways that matched their values for a more equitable world. A real-world example of an honest institutional commitment comes from Jodi Polaha and Robyn Shepardson—coeditors of this journal—in their transparent editorial titled “Enhancing equity, diversity, and inclusion in families, systems, and health” (Shepardson & Polaha, 2022). We cite this not to say we are foolproof from the need to evolve, but to demonstrate a blueprint of how sweeping changes were made in all aspects of decision making, visibility, engagement, and accountability.…”

Peer review: The jury duty of science.

“…Broadly, we have made a number of changes to our public-facing materials as well as our author/reviewer interface that we hope will improve our recruitment, selection, and match of reviewers from diverse backgrounds. These efforts are detailed in Shepardson and Polaha (2022). More specifically, we have worked to grow a more diverse Editorial Board, which we hope will, in turn, help us recruit reviewers from a broader network of qualified professionals (including apprentice reviewers).…”