With the March 2022 issue of JOMH we are introducing ourselves as the new editors of the journal. Bernice Hausman, Professor and Chair in the Department of Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine, will serve as Editor-in-Chief. Daniel George, Associate Professor in Humanities at PSCOM, will be the Senior Associate Editor and the primary corresponding editor for the journal.

Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA, is one origin point for medical humanities, heralded as the first medical school in the U.S. to include a Department of Humanities. Today, in bringing the editorship of the Journal of Medical Humanities to Hershey, we hope to continue this strong tradition of humanities in academic medicine that began in the late 1960s. Additionally, in creating an executive editorial board of faculty from Penn State campuses around the commonwealth, we are creating new mechanisms to ensure that the journal represents viewpoints inside and outside academic medicine.

As for Bernice, I started working in medical humanities in the 1990s and it has become one of the defining frames for my career. I continue to marvel at the fact that I am now chairing this storied department at Hershey, where I started in 2018. Moving from an English department at a research intensive university to a humanities department at a college of medicine has been an enormous shift; I plan to integrate what I am learning about these two cultures to lead the journal through its next iteration.

As for Danny, I was fortunate to launch my career in our department in Hershey in 2010. The medical/health humanities is a vibrant field and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work on this journal and keep a finger on the pulse of the exciting work our colleagues are doing internationally. My vision is for a dynamic journal with new opportunities for scholars in this field, including new article categories, creative genres, and critical perspectives.

There is no pithy way to characterize the articles that we have chosen for this issue: they reveal an explosion of diverse approaches that fall under the rubric of health humanities. As we move into our editorship, we are able to capitalize on the excellent work done by Tess and Kathleen, who have left us many articles online and in the revision queue. We are indebted to their inclusive and generous stewardship of the journal. Watch this space as we develop the JOMH of the future.

Bernice L. Hausman (bhausman1@pennstatehealth.psu.edu)

Chair, Humanities Professor

Humanities and Public Health Sciences

Penn State College of Medicine

Daniel R. George (dgeorge1@pennstatehealth.psu.edu)

Associate Professor

Humanities and Public Health Sciences

Penn State College of Medicine