In May 2022, Rutgers University Press announced the addition of a new series editor to the board of its award-winning scholarly book series, Critical Issues in Health and Medicine. Rana A. Hogarth, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, officially stepped into this new position.

Established in the 2000s by founding editors Rima D. Apple of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Janet Golden of Rutgers University, Critical Issues has become home to cutting-edge medical history for nearly 15 years. As the U.S. health care system came under increasing scrutiny in the public arena in the early 21st century, elected officials, medical professional, and citizens began grappling with rapidly increasing costs and overall declines in public health. In that context, Critical Issues in Health and Medicine books have traditionally explored and analyzed contemporary medical issues from a variety of perspectives, among them political, legal, historical, sociological, and comparative, with attention to crucial dimensions such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and culture.

Hogarth’s own research interests include Atlantic world history, history of medicine, and slavery, race, and African American history. She is the author of Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 (2017). Founding editors Apple and Golden are delighted with the addition of Hogarth to their team and aim to recruit and publish the best in new research and scholarship.