Significant global health gains have been achieved in recent years, and life expectancy has been greatly extended in various areas and regions of the world thanks to socioeconomic development and public health interventions on vaccination, nutrition, and sanitation. However, economic, political, cultural, and environmental forces continue to drive changes in the burden of diseases, and people everywhere continue to face a complex mix of interconnected threats to their health and well-being, including communicable and non-communicable diseases, high-impact public health emergencies, and the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.

Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019-2023 (GPW13) issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes three interconnected strategic priorities to ensure healthy lives and well-being for all people at all ages: achieving universal health coverage, addressing health emergencies, and promoting healthier populations. Ensuring healthy aging is also central to universal health coverage, just as it is to the other priorities of GPW 13. The number of people over the age of 60 is expected to double by 2050, and such unprecedented demographic development will require a radical societal response.

Japan, as the "super-aged" society, with the highest proportion of the elderly worldwide, has long been a leader and advocate in highlighting the importance of a resilient and sustainable health care system to promote healthy aging. Continuous efforts have been made in Japan, such as aligning the health care system to the needs of elderly populations, enhancing the functioning of the elderly and the management of chronic diseases, developing systems of long-term care, creating age-friendly environments, and improving the measurement, monitoring, and understanding of healthy aging.

Focus on the theme of global health and medicine including healthy aging, at the beginning of the new era (Reiwa) in Japan, we are pleased and honored to launch Global Health & Medicine (Print ISSN 2434-9186, Online ISSN 2434-9194), an international, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, published by the National Center for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM), which is a national research and development agency in Japan that covers advanced general medicine, basic science, clinical science, and international medical collaboration.

Global Health & Medicine is dedicated to publishing high-quality original research that contributes to advancing global health and medicine, with the goal of creating a global information network for global health, basic science as well as clinical science oriented for clinical application. We aspire to identify, attract, and publish original research that supports advances of knowledge in critical areas of global health and medicine.

As an international journal and an English language publication, Global Health & Medicine will accept submissions from around the world. We encourage submission of original research findings in the fields of global health, public health, and health care delivery as well as the seminal and latest research on the intersection of biomedical science and clinical practice in order to encourage cooperation and exchange among scientists and healthcare professionals in the world. We will also consider papers discussing cutting-edge findings driving the evolution of global health care, such as the rapid adoption of digital technologies in medical research and practice, including genomic sequencing and other –omics approaches as well as use of artificial intelligence to analyze "big data" from millions of individuals and to assist health practitioners and scientists for the more rapid and precise diagnosis and better treatment of illnesses.

Having brought together a globally representative and diverse audience, advisory board, authors, and reviewers, Global Health & Medicine will maintain a high standard of peer-review and publication, with the aims of informing readers of the best research, encouraging multidisciplinary approaches, promoting new ways of assessing and tackling challenges in global health and medicine, and publicizing rigorous research to advance practices and truly improve global human health.

The open-access policy of Global Health & Medicine will allow all readers from the medical and scientific community to freely utilize material published in the journal. You are invited to contribute articles to Global Health & Medicine disseminating your recent research findings in the fields of global health and medicine.