Grand Challenges in Public Health Policy

Fifteen years into the twenty-first century, the challenges for public health may have changed but have not diminished. Complacency, systems inertia, and national self-interest remain powerful barriers to global and universal health improvement. As joint chief editors for this new specialty journal, we lay out an ambitious mission: to work with the editorial board and colleagues worldwide to create the pre-eminent open access journal for public health practitioners working in policy and practice. The aim of this article is twofold: to scope out the breadth of topics that may be covered in the journal, and to reflect on the kind of difficult but essential conversations that may be possible in such an enterprise. We hope to encourage diverse contributions to the journal that reflect deeply on the contingent nature of public health policy as it is put into practice in a range of contexts and settings across the world, as well as the commonalities that underpin it. This article is structured into four parts: a brief outline of historic and current practice; a discussion of definitional and ethical issues in public health; a reflection on strengths and weaknesses as we see them; and, finally, a set of grand challenges that we hope to address in this journal, which are central to the grandest public health mission of all – changing the world for the better.