Dear friends and supporters of the Keppel Health Review

After three incredible years working together as the Keppel Health Review (KHR), we have decided to pause our publication. The KHR was established as a small student-run magazine in response to glaring issues of representation and miscommunication we identified in global health journalism while studying at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2020. With growing support for our work, we launched the KHR as a global platform for researchers, scientists, artists, and activists to publish on a diverse range of topics related to health. We felt passionate about demystifying dense scientific ideas, unique individual experiences, and abstract artistic expression in an accessible and digestible format. The KHR was formed as a communal place to explore, understand, and deconstruct 'health'. 

Over the last three years, we have been read by 65,000 people in over 72 countries, growing our team to more than 70 editors and writers around the world. We have remained an entirely volunteer-run organisation, with no formal training in journalism. Using our own diverse knowledge and interests, we have taught each other skills that enable our articles to connect with a diverse international audience. 

This method of mutual and representative health communication is both radical and necessary. Public health communication is under increasing scrutiny; the rise of misinformation, bad science, and discriminatory priorities exacerbating distrust in medical authorities and scientific experts. Slow, peer-reviewed, and inaccessible literature is failing to to compete with fast-paced, responsive, and readily-available media outlets, making traditional information sources both less respected and effective than they once were.

The KHR reframes what credible health communication is: to be both informed and impactful, it must be accessible and representative of the diverse disciplines and identities of the people it desires to reach.

We continue to believe in the importance and necessity of the KHR’s vision, and hope to re-launch our publication in the future, either in our existing format or as a new platform all together.

In the meantime, our community remains active, and we warmly welcome anyone to get in touch with ideas, suggestions, or collaboration opportunities. We are also happy to work with existing projects, start-ups, or journalists to share the resources, tools, and knowledge that we have cultivated in creating our platform. You can reach us at editors@keppelhealtreview.com. Our previous publications can be found here and our Vision Statement here.