Harvard Medical School Physicians To Launch New Healthcare Journal

UPDATED: Nov. 30, 2012, at 4:59 p.m.

Two Harvard Medical School physicians recently announced the launch of a new journal focusing on healthcare delivery. “Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation” will be distributed by Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services.

Co-founders Amol S. Navathe and Sachin H. Jain ’02 brought the initiative to life in the hopes of providing a novel vehicle for communicating recent advances in their discipline.

“There is an extraordinary amount of change going on in the health care system right now,” said Jain, a lecturer on healthcare policy. “There needs to be a rapid dissemination of learning as we send some of our best ideas of how to improve health care into practice, and we are eager to provide people with a new source to share.”

With hundreds of journals already available to the greater scientific community, new publications generally fulfill increasingly specialized niches. “Health Care,” however, targets a diverse audience by catering to both practical and intellectual interests.

“We are not only scientifically rigorous, but we are also interested in real-life applications,” said Navathe, a clinical fellow in medicine. “Our target audience is not only academicians but also health care policy makers.”

Ashish Jha, a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health, envisions an illustrious future for the journal, slated for release in late spring 2013.

“In the short term, I want the journal to be seen by authors as an important venue for their work,” said Jha. “Over the long term, I want ‘Health Care’ to be a journal where clinical leaders look to first when they think about delivery system innovation.”

Navathe and Jain encourage community involvement in their venture.

“We are viewing this as a community effort and as a vehicle to engage,” said Navathe.

An alumnus of the college himself, Jain emphasized the importance of undergraduate participation in particular.

“People who are Harvard College undergraduates are tremendously talented and have a lot of enthusiasm,” said Jain. “There is no reason they can’t start to make a difference as undergraduates. My time at the college was tremendously significant in that it gave me the inspiration that I needed in order to go forward in this space. The rest is history.”

—Staff writer Fatima Mirza can be reached at fmirza@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following clarification and correction:

CLARIFICATION: Nov. 30

An earlier version of this article’s headline implied that the new publication “Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation” will be sponsored by Harvard Medical School rather than by two of its affiliates.

CORRECTION: Dec. 10

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Ashish Jha as a professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Public Health. In fact, Jha is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate professor of health policy and management at the School of Public Health.