Upon taking office, the current president of the United States issued an executive order to formally recognize two genders and forbid any scientific publication using the terms “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” In addition, initiatives involving diversity, equity, and inclusion were suspended or disbanded. As reported by the Washington Post, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authors have been directed “to contact scientific journals to pull back manuscripts that had been accepted, but not yet published, that did not comply with the executive order on gender ideology…”. Furthermore, it is implied that forthcoming manuscripts will be written in a manner consistent with the executive order, and that CDC authors who are on manuscripts that are not in compliance with the executive order should have their names removed as authors, regardless of their qualifications as authors as established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
As the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice (JPHMP), I want to make the official position of the journal very clear. We will continue to follow the guidance of the ICMJE with regards to defining authorship, the process for removing authors from submitted manuscripts, withdrawal of submitted manuscripts before publication, and corrections and retractions of publications. The application of the first three of these recommendations is relatively straight forward. Specifically, I acknowledge that CDC co-authors may not be able to give “final approval of the version to be published” if the manuscript is not in compliance with the executive order, and therefore they cannot be listed as authors or acknowledged in the final publication. I also acknowledge that some CDC authors will request that they be removed as authors following submission in order to be compliant with the executive order. In accordance with ICMJE guidance, it will be required that all co-authors be notified of this request. Similarly, any request to withdraw a manuscript must have the unanimous agreement of the co-authors. Requests for corrections and retractions after publication will only be honored if they address errors of fact that should have been corrected prior to submission or identified in the peer review process. Of note, a shift in political ideology is not grounds for correction. Similarly, retraction is reserved for “errors serious enough to invalidate results and conclusions and/or when there is scientific misconduct.” Again, political ideology does not define scientific misconduct or the scientific method.
Finally, the editorial standards of the journal will not be changing in light of the executive order. Any new submissions to the journal will be evaluated for scientific merit and public health relevance as they have since the inception of the journal 30 years ago. As such, it is my duty as Editor-in-Chief to ensure that articles published in JPHMP, which subsequently enter the scientific record, are methodologically sound and relevant to the practice of public health. Ignoring the existence of historically marginalized populations and health disparities does not satisfy either criterion.
Author Profile
- Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS, FACSM is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Implementation Science in the Division of Public Health Sciences at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He holds joint appointments in the departments of Family & Community Medicine and Epidemiology & Prevention. Dr. Moore also serves as the Director of Dissemination, Implementation, and Continuous Quality Improvement within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at Wake Forest University. He conducts community-engaged research focused on the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based strategies for the promotion of healthy behaviors in underserved populations. He also conducts epidemiological research examining the determinants of health behaviors and related comorbidities across the lifespan. His research portfolio spans chronic diseases such a hypertension, obesity, and diabetes, and interventions to prevent or treat these conditions through physical activity, healthy eating, and related health behaviors. Serving as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice (JPHMP) from 2007-2024, he assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief of JPHMP in January 2025. As a result of his research, he and his colleagues have published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, and he has received funding as principal investigator for his work from the National Institutes of Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Duke Endowment, and the de Beaumont Foundation, among others.
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