Carmel Williams, PhD, MA, Executive Editor
Carmel Williams has been executive editor of HHR since 2012. She has a PhD in community health and master’s degree in development studies from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She worked in health publishing and global health for many years, including 10 years as the executive director of a health NGO working throughout the Pacific. Dr. Williams’ research interests include the operationalisation of the right to health.
Joseph J. Amon, PhD, MSPH, Senior Editor
Joe Amon has been Senior Editor since 2019. He is the Director of the Office of Global Health and Clinical Professor in the Department of Community Health and Prevention at the Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health. Trained in molecular parasitology, he has worked for a wide range of governmental and non-governmental organizations. During his ten-year tenure at Human Rights Watch he founded programs on human rights and health, disability and the environment. Dr. Amon has also held visiting or adjunct academic appointments with Paris School of International Affairs (SciencesPo), Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Princeton, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins Universities.
Using quantitative, qualitative and legal/policy analysis, Dr. Amon has conducted research on how (and why) specific populations, and diseases, are neglected, and on the impact of political determinants, such as laws, and their enforcement, on health. This work has examined the impact of discrimination on access to prevention and treatment; censorship and the denial of health information; arbitrary detention; the “judicialization” of health; and the role of civil society in the response to infectious disease outbreaks and environmental health threats. He is also on the editorial board and ethics committee of the Journal of the International AIDS Society.
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH, Contributing Editor
With more than 30 years of experience in public health, Dr. Mary T. Bassett has dedicated her career to advancing health equity. Dr. Bassett is currently the Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University and the FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to joining the FXB Center, she served as New York City’s Commissioner of Health from 2014 to 2018.
Dr. Bassett’s many awards and honors include the prestigious Frank A. Calderone Prize in Public Health, a Kenneth A. Forde Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University, a Victoria J. Mastrobuono Award for Women’s Health, and the National Organization for Women’s Champion of Public Health Award. She has also been elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine. For many years, she served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health. Her recent publications include articles in The Lancet and in the New England Journal of Medicine addressing structural racism and health inequities in the United States.