Health and medical research for all: The challenge remains open
Journal: PLoS Medicine (2019)

Fifteen years ago in October, PLOS Medicine was launched with the intent to reinvent the medical journal.Our mission to serve as the leading open-access medical journal is unchanged and remains, we believe, as pressing and essential now as it was at launch.In this Editorial we highlight priorities for the journal in meeting the needs and expectations of clinicians and researchers in the coming years.We also reflect on the evolution of some of the major medical and health challenges affecting the world's people since our tenth anniversary [1] and discuss some recognizable changes in thinking and approaches in health research, clinical practice and medical publishing.We are also taking this opportunity, along with selected members of our Editorial Board, to highlight our favorite research and commentary articles in a series of blog posts at Speaking of Medicine (https://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/).At the global level, recognition of the urgent need for concerted action towards the health needs of the whole global population-and alongside it efficient open-access publication of and debate about research findings to speed the pace of progress-has never been clearer.The inextricable relationship between health and development has been detailed in the progression from Millennium Development Goals post-2015 to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 aspirational areas for investment and monitoring, all with explicit targets and indicators, running during the period 2015 to 2030 [2].SDG3 focuses on health and wellbeing, and even at this relatively early stage in the SDG process, there are examples of serious challenges in realizing health goals in the key population of children in many parts of the world, such as [3].Achievement of universal health coverage is a key element of SDG3, a theme that PLOS Medicine aims to support and scrutinize along with other challenges in global health, as illustrated in a recent Collection on health system quality assembled together with PLOS ONE [4].With disease prevention paramount in modern health care, infectious diseases relentlessly probe the capacity of health systems to protect all individuals against emerging and recognized pathogens, irrespective of countries' wealth or stage of development.This challenge is graphically shown in the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which at the time of writing has claimed an estimated 3157 cases and 2108 deaths [5].Despite widespread alarm at the lackadaisical response to the earlier West African outbreak of 2013 to 2016, the heavy toll of mortality and ill health in the latest outbreak reminds us that research on protection of and treatment for people with emerging infectious diseases is neglected at our peril.With rising global temperatures due to climate change causing a potential domino effect, ocean expansion, spatial reorganisation of disease vectors, and displacement of communities are among the biggest health challenges of our time [6].PLOS Medicine aims to play a crucial role in the dissemination of research in these areas as indicated by our 2017 Special Issue on