It’s no easy task to write an editorial that recommends future directions for CSP so soon after Claudia Travassos stepped down as the journal’s Editor-in-Chief. Although we respectfully acknowledge her right to this decision after she had dedicated nearly 20 years to science publishing, we cannot avoid an empty feeling. After all, “Claudia T” (as we fondly called her at the journal) had already accumulated solid experience as an Associate Editor while Carlos Coimbra Jr. was Editor, so she provided the bridge from Coimbra Jr.’s time to our own editorship.

Unlike Claudia T, we entered this editorial activity as “CSP novices”. This gave us freedom to propose changes, while also bringing huge responsibilities in maintaining the same previous quality. Claudia T played a crucial role in this process, guaranteeing a smooth, seamless, and elegant transition based on dialogue and exchange of ideas, always seeking agreement on the best decisions at different moments and in diverse situations. The word harmony accurately describes her role in the CSP team.

All this, not to mention her constant quest for balance among Public Health’s component areas – Epidemiology, Human Sciences, and Health Policy, Planning, and Management – in the CSP editorial policy, with respect for the degree of maturity and diversity of approaches, objects, and methods from different disciplinary perspectives.

Claudia T was especially attentive to the area of Health Policy, Planning, and Management, emphasizing the specificities of ethically engaged scientific production, oriented towards the unwavering pursuit of interventions focused on guaranteeing the population’s right to health. Her broad vision of the field is certainly the result of her research on healthcare and the inherent challenges of improving quality, equality, and social justice in access to public healthcare activities and services in Brazil. In addition, she made an essential contribution to fomenting critical reflection on current themes and issues of immediate interest and importance for Public Health, as expressed by her proposal for the creation of the Perspectives section in CSP.

All these reasons emphasize the importance of renewing and updating our editorial commitments. We have stated before that as Editors of CSP we do not follow a thematic or disciplinary division of labor. We will continue our editorial work, joined now by Luciana Dias de Lima (“Kalu”), who has already embraced the style and spirit of collegiate leadership, rising to the challenge posed by Claudia T: “You must be sure to guarantee a balance and to support our area in the field”. And we hereby invite Carlos Coimbra Jr. and Claudia Travassos to continue with the journal as Emeritus Editors in order for them to debate CSP guidelines and policies with us in the years to come.

We have learned much in science publishing in these last years, and we will remain attuned to the production of knowledge in Public Health to continue as an interdisciplinary field fed by multiple views from diverse schools of thought in establishing its own object of research: health in its social dimension.

Marilia Sá Carvalho
Cláudia Medina Coeli
Luciana Dias de Lima
Editors

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