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Mary E. Northridge, PhD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief

On September 11, the world changed. The crimes against humanity committed by terrorists at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and on 4 commercial airliners brought the international community together in horror, fear, outrage, and grief. This unity reflected the fact that among the thousands who were murdered in New York City were citizens of every faith, from some 79 countries. Beyond the dead and the disappeared, there are countless others around the world whose lifelines of support, nurturance, and hope have been abruptly severed.

This month's cover image of Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens, shows the uniquely international character of New York City. Immigrants make up a large proportion of the population here—1 in 3—of whom nearly half arrived in the past 15 years. The city's ratio of recent to resident immigrants has not been so high since 1910, when the immigrant surge through Ellis Island was at its peak.

In our lead editorial, the Journal's editorial board member Marsha Lillie-Blanton and her coauthor, Julie Hudman, thoughtfully address the thorny issues of race/ethnicity, immigration, and access to publicly supported social welfare benefits. Efforts to exclude immigrants from publicly supported sources of health coverage and care may reflect misperceptions of "the facts" on immigration and disputes between federal and state officials regarding who bears the primary responsibility for meeting the social welfare needs of impoverished residents.

Several research reports on immigration and health attest to the complexity of the issues involved. Guy Marks and his colleagues in Sydney, Australia, found limited effectiveness of a postmigration screening program for tuberculosis among refugee migrants who were predominantly from South East Asia. Marks et al. argue that passive case finding may be more useful than active case finding for the control of tuberculosis among refugees in this setting.

Paul Geltman and his associates at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found poor growth, indicating stunting or chronic malnutrition, almost exclusively among refugee children from developing regions; wasting, reflecting acute undernutrition, among children from Africa and East Asia; and overweight, associated with dental abnormalities, among children arriving from Eastern Europe and the Americas. Geltman and colleagues conclude that universal, comprehensive health screening and treatment of refugee children shortly after their arrival in the United States is essential.

Finally, Gilberto Granados and his coauthors at the Harbor–UCLA Medical Center assessed the impact of child and parental birthplace on insurance status and access to health care among Latino children. Like Lillie-Blanton and Hudman, they found that Latino children with immigrant parents were much more likely than those with citizen parents to lack insurance and access to care.

In the wake of the events of September 11, Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, stressed that "[t]errorism affects every society. As the world takes action against it, we have all been reminded of the need to address the conditions that permit the growth of such hatred and depravity." We join with him in calling for a stronger, more just, more benevolent, and more genuine international community across all lines of religion and race. As we mourn the horrific losses in New York City and around the world, we rededicate ourselves to the work of public health and to ensuring that the terrorists do not defeat us in our mission to achieve health for all.

This Article Extract Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Northridge, M. E. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Northridge, M. E.