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Volume
2: No. 1, January 2005
FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
Extending Our Reach
Lynne S. Wilcox, MD, MPH
Suggested citation for this article: Wilcox LS. Extending our reach.
Prev Chronic Dis [serial online] 2005 Jan [date cited].
Available from: URL:
http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2005/
jan/04_0107.htm.
With this issue, Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) begins its
second year of publication. The expertise and enthusiasm of our authors,
editors, reviewers, and board members enabled PCD to provide our readers
with a unique view of public health and chronic disease in 2004:
- Peer-reviewed articles of original research, community case studies,
literature reviews, and special topics in public health.
- Guest editorials and commentaries by recognized authorities such as
Leonard Syme of the University of California, Berkeley; George Hardy, Jr, of
the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials; David Katz of Yale
University; Adrian Bauman of Sydney University; and Jane Fountain of Harvard
University.
- Educational information for professionals on public health law, social
marketing, consortia development, and geographic information systems.
- Information for community advocates on community-based participatory
research, conference and media campaigns, and community cancer programs.
- Original art and multimedia presentations related to the populations of
public health.
Since we published our first issue, PCD has received more than 9000
subscriptions and more than 1.9 million Web site hits. Additionally, the journal has been
accepted for indexing in PubMed/Medline, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ),
and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and
Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and will provide all articles to the PubMed
Central open access catalog. But beyond these numbers, PCD
demonstrated that it is possible to create an online journal that achieves its
original goals: to establish dialogue between researchers and practitioners; to
explore new concepts in chronic disease prevention; and to emphasize
multidisciplinary, multisectorial approaches to public health.
We begin our second year by extending PCD’s multimedia capacity and
offering selected articles in Spanish. We thank Dr. Barbara Bowman of the National Center for Chronic Disease
Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for
serving as guest editor for this issue, which features articles that address the
public health challenges of diabetes along the border of Mexico and the United
States. We have provided Spanish and English
translations for selected border health articles and editorials as
well as for all border health abstracts. We look forward to hearing from our readers on the
usefulness of selected translations.
The border region along the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo) has its own culture, distinct from other communities in either country.
The food, the festivals, and the politics are all shared by the fronterizos.
Chronic disease morbidity is also shared across the border. In the communities
described in this issue, 20% of the Mexican Americans older than 39 have
diabetes. The Arizona Border Health ¡SI! program is multisectoral and designed
to encourage prevention and control of diabetes (1).
East of the communities of Border Health ¡SI!, the international
Bridge of the Americas spans the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad
Juarez, Chihuahua. Each country has jurisdiction over half of the bridge, and
thousands of cars and pedestrians cross daily in both directions. Chrissie Orr,
an artist, recognized that the bridge has ambivalent character:
. . . [T]he caged walkway is a hangout for different kinds of people. . . . It is the
“between,” the “never never land”; it is the State of Suspended Animation.
While working on this project [described below] a baby was born on the
bridge. It was born to Mexican parents just past the official border marker on
the American side, making the baby girl a full-fledged American citizen. . . .
[P]eople line up at the middle of the bridge and sleep here; in the winter they
light small fires. . . . (2)
Orr worked with children on both sides of the bridge to create painted shirts
that, when hung in the pedestrian walkway, reached across the entire bridge.
This year we extend PCD’s reach to you, our readers. Thank you for your
support in establishing this journal.
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References
- Cohen SJ, Ingram M. Border
health strategic initiative: overview and introduction to a
community-based model for diabetes prevention and control. Prev
Chronic Dis [serial online] 2005 Jan [Accessed 2004 Dec 15].
-
Orr C. Bridge project [Internet]. Metamorfosis [Accessed 2004 Sep 1].
Available from: URL: http://www.metamorfosis.com/bridgeproject/ proyectframes.htm*.
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*URLs for nonfederal organizations are provided solely as a
service to our users. URLs do not constitute an endorsement of any organization
by CDC or the federal government, and none should be inferred. CDC is
not responsible for the content of Web pages found at these URLs.
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