Abstract
The free and equitable discovery, creation, dissemination, and acquisition of scientific knowledge is essential to health promotion. Yet, the government of the United States is actively undermining those principles. We, the editors of Health Education & Behavior (HEB), cannot stand idly while the very existence of science is being questioned and the public’s health is being attacked.
The alarming measures we are witnessing did not emerge overnight; they are rooted in the nation’s history of capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and religious radicalism dating back to its colonial foundations and American apartheid. Despite significant progress, including global leadership in public health and nurturing an international community of public health scholars and practitioners, these advances are now collapsing.
Conservative forces and their allies in the United States government have recently enacted laws, policies, and directives that severely harm science and public health. In just the last few years and alarmingly in the past 2 months, these actions include restricting access to reproductive health, dismantling affirmative action, terminating research on transgender health, threatening support for research on LGBT health, erasing transgender communities, removing gender considerations, eliminating resources for minoritized researchers and for entire universities, and dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion practices—effectively reinstating white supremacy. In addition, they are degrading the public’s trust in the scientific process, promoting anti-vaccine narratives, threatening to defund climate change research, censoring and unjustifiably firing civil servants, and halting daily activities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The de facto elimination of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and weakening of PEPFAR further illustrate these detrimental policies toward Americans and the world.
Our readers can easily conclude how these actions negatively affect the health of every American and the discovery and dissemination of scientific knowledge. These effects extend far beyond, raising self-censorship and fear within our society and weakening educational institutions, including our schools of public health.
We will not remain silent. For those being attacked, know that we will do everything possible to protect science and marginalized voices. HEB is committed to publishing rigorous health equity research now and in the future. Science, scientists, and the research conducted on those most vulnerable in our society will not be censored. Many other scientific publications have raised their voices, often louder, and more eloquently than ours. We are not alone. We add our voices of solidarity and resistance.
To the young scientists conducting health equity research, know your research makes a difference. Keep going. To university leaders, do not turn your back on health equity scholars or young scientists. Research on health equity and, generally, public health, must continue.
To those people in society being attacked because of foundational aspects of their humanity, we must come together to protect one another. We know how to do it; remember our history. They have tried to annihilate us. They have failed.
“Our problem is not a fear of pandemics but a pandemic of fear,” philosopher Byung-Chul Han reminds us (Han, 2024). Paraphrasing him, we embrace our scientific, editorial, and public health work with hope. The creation of science is our hope for a future where everyone can achieve their full potential. We remain committed to our mission, valuing the democratic creation of science and the practice of public health globally, scientific rigor, and intellectual curiosity.
