Editorial |
It is a great privilege to take on editorship of the Journal of Public Health.
Selena Gray1
Gabriel Leung, Professor2
1 University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
2 The University of Hong Kong
The Journal of Public Health focuses on the theory and practice of the whole spectrum of public health across the domains of health improvement, health protection and service improvement, with a particular focus on the translation of science into action. We aim to promote the highest standards of public health practice internationally through the timely communication of current, best scientific evidence.
This issue includes articles highlighting the importance of child health on long term patterns of health, with a systematic review of childhood experiences of violence on adult behaviour. The challenges of dealing with health in an increasingly multicultural society are highlighted, with a study examining how primary prevention for diabetes and heart disease can be undertaken in ethnically diverse schools, and another how routine data can be used to look at ethnic differentials in access to revascularisation.
As always in public health practice, issues of tobacco and alcohol are never far from the surface and there are papers addressing binge drinking in female students and how NHS staff deal with smoke free regulation. Given the recent UK and Hong Kong outbreaks of norovirus, the paper looking in depth at the quality of European surveillance systems of this disease is particularly timely.
We are in the process of introducing incremental changes to the Journal, to make it more focused on translating research into practice, and more internationally relevant, providing evidence to underpin public health practice in a wide variety of different settings. We will continue to seek papers that look in depth at the causes of disease and, in the light of this, how to prevent illness and promote good health. Surveillance of communicable as well as chronic complex diseases are within the Journal's remit, as are the monitoring and study of environmental hazards. The journal also covers planning, provision and evaluation of health services, in the context of systems of care.
However, we also wish to introduce more debate into the journal, and to broaden the content of the journal to embrace discourse about the role of public health ethics and law, and the intersection of the arts and humanities with public health practice. As part of this change we will be introducing in the next issue two new features, Perspectives, which will present critical views on controversies in public health practice, policy and politics in an analytic essay format, and Chekhov's corner, which will contain articles exploring the arts and humanities and public health practice.
Regular contributions from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, the Cochrane Collaborative Review Group in Public Health and the Health Protection Agency will provide a regular update on key public health outputs from these groups.
We very much look forward to engaging with the public health community in developing and shaping the journal to meet your needs.
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