Faculty Profile: Austin Frakt.

As the Editor in Chief of Health Services Research (HSR), Austin Frakt is making space for in-depth scholarship on health equity and racial justice. The research professor of health law, policy & management at the School of Public Health also directs the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the VA Boston Healthcare System, where he oversees research to improve veteran care.

Frakt took the helm of HSR last January, and he says the official journal of AcademyHealth is “at the intersection of policy relevance and methodological rigor.”

One of his primary goals is to increase diversity across the HSR editorial team in racial and ethnic representation—as well as in methodological, disciplinary, and geographic areas—and place a greater focus on health equity, racial justice, and the social determinants of health.

“Health Services Research is open to research that thinks more deeply about where disparities come from,” Frakt says. This goal will “require us to be open and honest about systemic racism as an ultimate source.”

Those disparities have been laid bare by the pandemic. As a father of two teenagers, he also worries about long-lasting effects on the education and well-being of what he calls “the COVID generation”—those roughly between the ages of 5 and 20.

Young people are among those who are struggling, he says, and they will continue to do so. “Between the pandemic and the awakening to social justice, this has been a defining moment that will shape their lives forever.”