For public health in Europe

A new scientific review, Public Health Reviews, is being launched on Internet. The review is dedicated to public health, articles are in English and access is free on-line and unrestricted. A collection of articles on paper on particular themes will also be published twice a year. Volume 1 covering the first half of 2010 (340 pages) will be available soon, price €49 inclusive of VAT from Presses de l’EHESP, Rennes, or from ASPHER (Association des écoles de santé publique européennes – Association of European public health schools) in Brussels.

Was yet another review really necessary in a world where we are wilting under a surfeit of information? Well, surprising as it may seem, it is not really true that we have too much information in the public health field. The only other review is the Annual Review of Public Health and it has the strongest impact factor (7.9) of scientific reviews dealing with public health. It is published once a year, one volume has about 500 pages and is used as a reference work by many professionals who often keep it close at hand in their libraries. However, more than 90% of the authors of articles published are North American. Some will say that this is the harsh reality of scientific competition, others will be surprised by this high percentage when the health models most often cited, on both sides of the Atlantic, as being the most effective in the world tend to be European.

We did not want to produce a review that was 90% European. We did, however, want the review to present a more balanced picture of each side of the Atlantic. The 27-strong editorial committee, therefore, includes 15 Europeans (including 3 French, one of whom is the editor in chief), and, of the first 18 articles, 9 are by Europeans, 8 by North-Americans and one by the Australian, Robin Warren, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005.

We wanted the review to be free for authors and readers alike, as public health professionals do not always benefit from the subscriptions to publications that universities usually provide for their research and teaching personnel. We wanted a free review financed by public funds only, on similar lines to the Emerging Infectious Diseases, a review financed by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The first four issues of the review are being funded by the EHESP and ASPHER. We will then, together, enthusiastically seek support from European organisations as we believe that European public health needs initiatives such as Public Health Reviews. We will do our utmost to ensure that these initiatives continue to give an independent, unbiased view of the major issues at stake, now and in the future, in the sensitive field of public health policies. The next volume to be published on the website between September and December 2010 will be on aging. The third volume in 2011 will cover cardio-vascular diseases, which are a major scourge of modern society. The fourth volume to be published in 2011 will be a comparison of public health education in various countries.

Reading five Public Health Reviews articles a day keeps the doctor away!