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

This issue of the Journal marks 2 firsts, which speak to both the quickening pace of change over our lifetimes and the need to slow down to contemplate where we are going. First, as of this issue, the Journal is fully available on-line. The executive board of the American Public Health Association began considering an electronic version of the Journal a mere 2 years ago. In the ensuing period, the world of peer-reviewed scientific publication has experienced rapid and unprecedented change. Timely—if not instantaneous—availability of scientific information is needed to contribute to ongoing health and policy debates. Meeting this challenge, the Journal joins close to 300 quality peer-reviewed scientific publications working with HighWire Press—an advantage of scale given today's aggressive publications market.

The second first is the Journal's new look. Each month, a carefully selected image will signal a key issue featured in this new department, Editor's Choice. The inaugural photograph of a body of water where there used to be a highway dramatizes the local effects of global climate change. Wickham & Associates, Inc., of Washington, DC, worked closely with the Journal's editors and staff to create a clean, fresh look that we believe will both enhance the accessibility of the scientific information contained herein and attract new audiences to public health through new editorial features and greater use of images. The flexible design is able to accommodate rapidly evolving needs and outreach on broader scales than was formerly possible.

A monthly journal cannot possibly provide fast-breaking news, but it can pose thoughtful questions that require more complete, more complex, more comprehensible, and perhaps more compelling analysis than can be gained from rapid responses given daily or weekly deadlines. In March 2001, the United States summarily rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the hopeful, if flawed, international treaty on global warming. Once again, economic and political interests held sway over ecologic concerns. While certain kinds of environmental problems, such as oil spills and nuclear accidents, garner media attention, the slow-moving yet profoundly threatening changes evidenced by the melting of polar ice caps and soil loss rarely make the nightly news.

These long-term crises do make their way into the peer-reviewed literature, however, and increasingly, scientific data are being used to inform health and policy decisions. The tempo and scale of environmental change brought about by human activity are unprecedented in today's world. For public health concerns to help shape the agenda, it is imperative that the Journal continue to publish strong scientific studies that move with the tempo of the present age to meet the scale of challenges involved in creating a sustainable planet.

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 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 Articles by Northridge, M. E.