BACKGROUND
The editorial opens by situating global public health at a pivotal moment, noting that the field—despite its post-Alma Ata promise to dismantle colonization, exploitation, and inequitable healthcare access—has largely reproduced the same systems of power imbalance. Power remains concentrated among elites in high-income countries, while low- and middle-income countries face the hardest health challenges with the fewest resources. The authors cite the COVID-19 vaccine inequity as the starkest recent illustration: rich countries discuss boosters and waste vaccines, while poor countries face dangerous variants without adequate supply. They also reference the Black Lives Matter movement, Women in Global Health, and calls to decolonize global health as forces that have opened space for uncomfortable conversations about power and privilege in funding, authorship, and journal publishing. Specific concerns include lack of diversity on editorial boards and unaffordable article processing charges for authors from low- and middle-income countries. The authors further note epistemic injustice—the privileging of scholarship from the Global North—and acknowledge that power asymmetries exist not only between North and South but also within the Global South and within countries.
METHODS
This is an editorial/position piece announcing the launch of PLOS Global Public Health. The journal's approach is described as deliberately structured to embed equity, diversity, and inclusion at every level. The editors describe their recruitment strategy: 43 section editors from 23 countries have been announced, a majority of whom are women and Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC), and half are based in the Global South. A larger panel of academic editors is being recruited from well over 50 countries. The journal commits to diverse publication formats, including blog posts, and to engaging students and youth. It will follow the PLOS ONE model of judging submissions on methodological rigor rather than novelty or impact factor. The journal will provide immediate gold open access and has a global equity model for article processing charges to prevent fees from being a barrier. The authors acknowledge the limitation of publishing only in English and plan to work toward language accessibility. They explicitly commit to being feminist, anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, anti-ableist, anti-elitist, and anti-classist, and to addressing parachute/helicopter research through PLOS’ policy on inclusion in global research.
KEY RESULTS
The editorial does not present original research results. It announces the journal's scope, which includes global health delivery; infectious diseases; non-communicable diseases; race and health; mental health; laboratory medicine; maternal, newborn, and child health; nutrition; sexual and reproductive health and rights; Indigenous health; environmental and planetary health; evidence use and policy; global health governance; social and behavioral health; humanitarian aid and conflict/displacement; injuries, trauma and global surgery; global health financing and trade; gender and health; and global health security. The journal welcomes quantitative and qualitative primary research, clinical trials, replication studies, negative or null results, systematic reviews, and submissions describing methods, software, databases, or other tools that meet criteria for utility, validation, and availability.
CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
While not a clinical study, the editorial has significant implications for global health practice and publishing. It sets a new standard for how global health journals can operationalize equity, diversity, and inclusion—not merely through pledges but through structural choices about editorial leadership, reviewer pools, author fees, language accessibility, and publication criteria. By committing to publish research on health inequities wherever they occur (not just in low-income countries) and to amplify historically excluded voices, the journal aims to reshape which research is considered valuable and who gets to participate in global health knowledge production. The authors acknowledge they will make mistakes and commit to accountability and learning.