Authors

  1. Mayer, Nathaniel H. MD, Editor

Article Content

This issue, Positive Behavior Support, develops the theme that appropriate supports in context, despite the presence of disability, will facilitate the ability of people with acquired brain injury to participate in activities and settings of their own choosing. Feeney, Jacobs, and Ylvisaker have organized a focused and highly detailed series of articles that rest on fundamental questions pondered by clinicians in almost every case of acquired brain injury-namely, assuming principles of beneficence and autonomy, what supports are required by and ought to be given to people with acquired brain injury in life-long living settings, and what supports might be needed by and ought to be provided for such people to enable participation in life-long living activities? Many answers and more than a few questions may be inferred from the detailed case studies and literature reviews found inside this issue.

 

It is fortuitous that JHTR 18:1 raises the issue of supports that facilitate participation in important life activities. The editors of this journal-Mitch, Bruce, Kathy, Ross, and I-are well aware of and fully appreciate the importance of contextual supports as we methodically (mostly, moistly, sometimes maddeningly) mobilize a given issue of the journal toward its day of publication. No editor is an island. Behind the scenes, a publishing company's staff provides the contextual supports that aid the editors in fulfilling their responsibilities to the readership and to our field. With this in mind, the readership will note that JHTR, formerly an Aspen publication, has recently come under the wing of a new publishing house, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc (LWW). Correspondingly, JHTR's editors have begun a new relationship with the editorial staff of LWW, one of the largest health sciences publishers in the world. LWW was founded in Philadelphia 200 years ago, and, even when founded in 1792, its major focus was health sciences publications! Today, it publishes more than 300 health-related journals that encompass the professions of medicine, nursing, and allied health. LWW's assumption of publishing responsibility for JHTR makes JHTR the first brain injury journal to come under the umbrella of a company in which more than 70% of the journals, like JHTR, are represented in Index Medicus. JHTR's editors have already met several times with LWW's hospitable editorial staff and have been warmly welcomed into their publishing family with undisguised enthusiasm and refreshing flexibility that speak well for helping us solve the workaday problems that arise with every issue. Based on our initial encounters, we inform our readership with anticipated satisfaction that LWW has verbally committed itself to a long-term relationship with JHTR because it believes in JHTR's mission and respects its leadership and readership. We look forward to a promising long-term tenure with Sandy Kasko, Publisher; Jennifer Brogan, Publishing Director; and Glenn Cullen, Journals Coordinator, who are slated to provide the "positive behavior support" for JHTR and its editors. Welcome!

 

Finally, and with great pride, I recall the Philadelphia moment in October when one of JHTR's founding editors, Mitch Rosenthal, received the 2002 Gold Key Award from the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM). This award, recognizing meritorious organizational achievement, is the highest level of award conferred on any individual by ACRM. Mitch was honored in the tradition of many other great leaders of rehabilitation and it was good to see his leadership recognized publicly once again. In a real sense, awards and recognition, though given after the fact, serve as positive behavioral support for organizational leaders but they are also important for encouraging others to follow suit in their own time. It was entirely fitting and proper that Mitch Rosenthal, who has offered positive support to countless others during his distinguished career, receive his ACRM recognition shortly and unexpectedly after undergoing personal tribulation with cardiac surgery from which he successfully emerged. The readership will be pleased to hear that Mitch, a man of resilient heart, is well on his way to being hale and (dare I say it) hearty and he has resumed his energetic ways on all our behalves[horizontal ellipsis] until age 120, as Shelly Berrol, our other beloved founder, might have exclaimed to Mitch this day.