As 2022 ends, we reflect on recent accomplishments and future directions of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Healthcare Epidemiology (ASHE). Launched in 2021, the journal is evolving by leaps and bounds.  Major accomplishments include a continued growth of submissions and publications, downloads, social media presence, and launch of the ASHE podcast. Finally, the journal successfully achieved SCOPUS and Pub-Med indexing in record time.

The overarching theme of our past and present plan is sustained expansion of ASHE through the publication of new perspectives, growing the diversity of authors, improvements in author experience by way of shortened manuscript acceptance and publication times, enhanced social media presence with visual abstracts and promotion of the ASHE Blog and podcast.

In terms of overall submissions, in 2022 we received 239 new manuscripts.  We also published the SHEA Spring 2022 proceedings. The number of articles downloads significantly increased from 22,311 to 109,223. This growth is due to the enthusiasm of the SHEA membership and the open accessibility of our publications by the growing international infection prevention and stewardship community. Also, in 2022 Dr. Pamela Bailey joined us as the social media editor, promoting cutting-edge primary research articles, visual abstracts, and opinion pieces, which were retweeted and cited numerous times.

We sought new horizons by expanding partnerships with the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP), and successfully recruited a Dr. Bradley Langford as a new Associate Editor, and the Asia Pacific Society of Infection Control (APSIC), whose 2022 meeting proceedings will soon be published in ASHE.

In addition, we are particularly proud of our novel “Women of Epidemiology” section, a nod to the popular SHEA Spring session created by Drs. Trish Perl, Louis Dembry, Hillary Babcock, Chris Nyquist, and other noteworthy SHEA leaders. Using “Women in Epi” as a vehicle, we also launched the ASHE podcast to host in-depth conversations with authors of our most downloaded and cited articles.

Dr. Susan Bradley, emeritus Editor in Chief of our companion journal, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, was the inaugural “Women in Epi” contributor and first podcast guest. She shared her career highlights, challenges, important lessons learned, and her perspectives on our unique role as advocates for healthcare rights of our patients.  Later in the episode, Dr. Pam Bailey spoke of her motivation to write “Restricted Reproductive Health and Infectious Diseases Outcomes: A Call to Action” which was one of ASHE’s most widely shared and downloaded articles of 2022. This piece was endorsed by the SHEA Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee and Board of Trustees in their statement regarding the Dobbs decision. We are proud that ASHE has become a platform to discuss intersections of important issues of our day. Future “Women in Epi” contributors include some of most treasured colleagues, like Dr. Judy Guzman-Cottrill.

In November, we celebrated World Antibiotic Awareness Week in style with a publication led by Drs. Bradley Langford, Khalid ElJaaly, and Kelly Matson entitled “Ten ways to make the most of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week.” We had a blast interviewing the authors for our second podcast episode and covered many topics, including the future of social media as a vehicle for stewardship dissemination. 

In the upcoming year, will continue to focus on growth of content, increased downloads, unique perspectives and high-quality science.  To do so will require the relentless recruitment of high-quality submissions. In addition, we will seek new international partnerships to add a diversity of authors and perspective to ASHE.  We will continue to focus on further improving the ASHE author experience by decreasing time to first decision and publication, further enhance social media promotion and provide guidance and assistance with visual abstracts.  Podcasts will continue to strategically highlight ASHE content.  We will work closely with all authors from low- and middle-income countries to minimize article processing charge barriers to publication.  We will continue to publish proceedings from SHEA spring and other cutting-edge science.  Our aim is to position ASHE as a premier, fully open access journal advancing the fields of antimicrobial stewardship and healthcare epidemiology across the globe.