Dr. Lloyd Novick’s Impact on JPHMP and Its Authors

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Before I knew Lloyd, I knew of him. As a doctoral student in a health policy and management program, his work was mandatory reading in more than one of my classes. It’s funny, at that stage in my studies, I didn’t even know what JPHMP really was, much less what it would come to mean to me. It was in my second or third year before I recognized the journal as a go-to resource for public health systems research. Then I got to know the journal, and eventually I got to know Lloyd through correspondence and conference meetups. It would be a couple of years before we had a conversation beyond the business of public health. When we did, it became apparent to me—as it has to countless others—that he was kind, fiercely intelligent, and cared as deeply about public health as anyone I’ve ever known.

As a student, I devoured back issues of the journal, reading as much as I could get my hands on. I looked forward to the day I would publish my own work there. When a paper was accepted (with major revisions) or even rejected, I always found Lloyd’s feedback to be kind and constructive. While I saw my share of frustrating reviewer comments, that was never the case with Lloyd’s. As a young professional, it is hard to overstate how valuable it was to be taken seriously by a person like him, and to feel like, even if editorial felt a submission didn’t quite pass muster, you could still expect something productive to come out of it. Well past a decade later, I still reflect on those early days and what JPHMP has meant in and for my career.

Impact.

What is the measure of a man who spent the last half of his professional life championing a journal? To me, that measure is heavily influenced by the impact of what he helped create and shepherded for so long. Put differently, it’s not just about the articles, but about the people.

For three decades, JPHMP has been a place where practice-minded academics and practitioners could come together to talk and study the most important issues in the field. What is that impact, though? As best as I can estimate, Lloyd, and later Justin, oversaw the publication of at least 4,000 articles from more than 9,000 individual contributors. Set aside for a moment the citations, news coverage, follow-up studies, and broader impact of those papers; consider the impact of a journal like JPHMP on its author community—on their relationships and their careers. To me, that’s one way to talk about Lloyd’s legacy: through the people who he thought did work rigorous enough to be represented in the journal.

As part of this post, I wanted to make things a little more personal. Of the available articles, I have compiled available authorship data so that anyone who has published here between 1995 and 2024 (I think?) can see the work they’ve done and the people they’ve worked with. Personally, and selfishly, I see some of my favorite work here and the people I most enjoy collaborating with on the topics I care about most.

Thanks to Lloyd, and now to Justin, for making JPHMP a place unlike any other in our field. I’ll be pleased to support it in this next stage and will remember Lloyd fondly for what came first.

About the Author

JP Leider
Dr. JP Leider is the Director of the Center for Public Health Systems at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and a member of the JPHMP Editorial Board. He is available at leider (at) umn (dot) edu.
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