Q&A with Gonzalo Bearman, MD

1. What is your background and how did your involvement with Antimicrobial Stewardship and Healthcare Epidemiology (ASHE) start?

            I am formally trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases and preventive medicine public health.  I completed a three year infectious Diseases fellowship at Cornell University with a focus on healthcare infection prevention/healthcare epidemiology, where I obtained a Master of Public Health Degree (Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health).  I joined SHEA as an ID fellow and have been a part of the organization ever since.  After fellowship, I took an assistant professorship at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 2003, where I remain as the Chair of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Medical Director of the Healthcare Infection Prevention Program. 

I had the great fortune of being mentored at VCU by Drs. Richard Wenzel and Michael Edmond, who pushed me in all things scholarly and academic. My prior editorial experiences include Current Infectious Diseases Reports (Section Editor), Current Treatment Options in Infectious Diseases (Editor in Chief), Guide to Infection Prevention in the Healthcare Setting (Editor in Chief- International Society for Infectious Disease), New Perspectives and Controversies in Infection Prevention (Editor) and The Medical Literary Messenger (Editor in Chief). When the opportunity for the ASHE EIC position arose, for a new, innovative, open access SHEA journal with Cambridge University Press, I enthusiastically submitted my application.

2. How would you describe the Journal’s scope?

            ASHE is committed to the rapid dissemination of high quality, timely, evolving science in antimicrobial stewardship and healthcare epidemiology, in an open access model, to serve both developed and low and middle-income countries.

3. Are there any areas in which you would like to receive more manuscripts?

            Although the title suggests that we are dedicated to antimicrobial stewardship and healthcare epidemiology, we also seek perspectives in implementation science, organizational psychiatry, process improvement, healthcare administration, biostatistics and modeling, clinical cases in healthcare epidemiology and pro-con debates on controversial subjects, to name a few.

4. What are your aims and objectives for the journal?

           ASHE is committed to diversity in professional background, nationality and gender across the editorial team, such that journal leadership reflect not only the membership of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, but the antimicrobial stewardship and healthcare epidemiology community at large.  We seek innovative original science, reviews and commentaries that represent a diversity of perspectives, issues, evolving challenges and controversies in the varied field of healthcare epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship, with the ultimate goal of maximal content accessibility to a worldwide readership. 

The first year of the journal is focused on publishing sufficient content for PubMed indexing and citability.