It is an honor to assume the role of Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, the official journal of the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers (APAHC). On behalf of APAHC and the editors, board members, and readers of JCPMS, I wish to thank outgoing Editor-in-Chief Dr. Ronald Brown for his outstanding leadership of the journal over the past five years. On a more personal note, I would like to express my gratitude to Katherine Lang and colleagues at Springer Nature for making the editorial transition smooth and pleasant, and to the APAHC board of directors for their support and guidance throughout this process. Finally, it is my pleasure to introduce our two new associate editors, Dr. Lora Thompson and Dr. Nataliya Zelikovsky, who previously served on the JCPMS editorial board.

This year, JCPMS is approaching 30 years of publication! As I reflected on this approaching milestone, and my ten years as an associate editor, I revisited Rozensky’s (1994) editorial in the inaugural issue of JCPMS. Expecting to focus on what has changed, instead I was struck by how contemporary it seemed. To be sure, much has changed: for instance, the field of health psychology is no longer “emerging” but rather a thriving specialty, and psychology’s influence on healthcare has been realized in ways that few would have envisioned a few decades ago. At the same time, the reach of psychology into healthcare and health policy still feels dynamic and uncertain. A psychologist who accepts a position at an academic medical center today might join a large, well-established team of their peers, but it’s also quite possible they will be the first psychologist in their position, or in any position, in the organization. Many healthcare leaders, regulators, and payers remain ambivalent about psychologists’ roles and value. Despite high demand and rigorous demonstration of meaningful outcomes, psychological services are not universally available nor widely accessible. In short, we are far from realizing the full potential of psychologically informed healthcare and inclusion of psychologists in medical settings.

As with the shifts in the healthcare landscape over the past 30 years, the landscape of scholarly publishing has also changed markedly. For one, the landscape is much busier. The volume of scientific publication output in the U.S. and worldwide climbed steadily through 2020 (National Science Board, 2021). Despite warning signals from the replication crisis (Shrout & Rodgers, 2018) and growing awareness of research misconduct (Craig et al., 2020), academics remain under enormous pressure to publish. Artificial intelligence is now being deployed to assist with the workload, with as-yet uncertain ramifications for the quality, ethics, and equity of scientific publishing (van Dis et al., 2023). JCPMS receives far more manuscripts now than in its early years, and this creates both challenges and opportunities. Types and topics of submissions shift over time, but our touchstones are “the strengths of the scientist-practitioner tradition… and psychology’s core knowledge” (Rozensky, 1994).

My goal is to ensure that JCPMS continues to be a unique and vital home for the work of an increasingly diverse community of psychologists in academic health centers, medical schools, teaching hospitals, and other medical settings. Please visit the journal’s home page, where you will notice recent revisions to the aims and scope for JCPMS to better fit the current landscape, as well as updates to the editorial board. In this first year of my term, I am also committed to a more consistent and timely peer review experience. Looking ahead, editorial board members have already made several thoughtful suggestions about how to make JCPMS more engaging for readers, authors, and reviewers. I look forward to following up with more updates and opportunities of interest to our community.

I welcome your suggestions and look forward to working with you to publish innovations and data that have potential for meaningful impact on psychologists’ functions as clinicians, scientists, educators, administrators, and leaders in medical settings.

Sincerely,

Andrea Bradford, PhD

Editor-in-Chief