EDITORIAL
José da Rocha Carvalheiro
Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia is consolidating its new phase. The idea is to keep up with the regular issues required for it to remain in the SciELO base and with a strictly regular number of articles submitted through the ongoing flow and analyzed by the peer review process. In accordance to the features that RBE has been showing in various numbers, there are no single author articles, and there is a mean of 3.8 authors per article: 22 women (64.7 %) and only 12 men (35.3 %).
There are nine articles, all of them domestic and from four Brazilian macro regions. Most of them come from the Southeast, three from Rio de Janeiro, two from São Paulo, and one from Minas Gerais. The other three come from the Northeast (Ceará), South (Rio Grande do Sul) and Center West (Brasília) regions. University professionals and health services personnel worked together in three of these articles. In one of them, undergraduate students of the University of Brasília and the University of São Paulo USP Ribeirão Preto, along with a professional from the Ministry of Health, analyze the risk of Tuberculosis infection in Brasília. In another, ergonomic factors involved in risk and protection in nursing work gather undergraduate students from UERJ and UFMG to professionals from the Rio de Janeiro State Health Department and State Hemotherapy Institute, and a professional from the Belo Horizonte Family Health Program. In a third study from Ribeirão Preto, a USP professor joins a professional from the local Municipal Health Department to analyze the prevalence of Hepatitis B in pregnant women.
There is a great diversity of themes and methods in the remaining work. A version of a questionnaire on eating habits was analyzed in terms of reliability in university students in Rio de Janeiro. The opinion of the elderly regarding the quality of life concept is analyzed in Botucatu, São Paulo. The influence of socio-demographic, prophylactic and therapeutic factors on survival after the diagnosis of AIDS in an open cohort in Rio de Janeiro is analyzed, based on the universal access to the antiretroviral therapy of the National STD/AIDS Program. A cross-sectional study using self-reported questionnaires in bank employees of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, analyzes osteomuscular disorders. The prevalence and factors linked to the utilization of anti-inflammatory non-steroidal drugs are analyzed in a cross-sectional study of patients of a hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The poor health status of institutionalized elderly is analyzed in Fortaleza, Ceará.
We included in this number, in addition to the present Editorial, another three Special Editorials, contributions of distinguished guests in equally distinguished themes. Their titles suffice to show their importance.
"We lost Richard Doll", written by Sérgio Koifman, Associate Editor of RBE, is a testimony in which he pays tribute to the human features of Dr. Doll, making this icon of modern Epidemiology even more noteworthy. Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia may eventually become acknowledged internationally because of having published in its second number, in 1998, an original article by Richard Doll, "Epidemiology of chronic non-infectious diseases: current status and future perspective".
The "Fourth Master Plan for the Development of Epidemiology in Brazil", by the Coordinator of Abrasco's Epidemiology Committee, Maria da Glória Teixeira, reports the process for preparing this fourth version of the work proposal of Brazilian epidemiologists for the coming five years. As in the previous Plan, this new one will also be included in a special number of RBE.
"Cohort study method", by Marília Sá Carvalho and Claudia Lopes, members of Abrasco's Epidemiology Committee, reports a methodological seminar held in August. And it does more, promises to promote the contributions and debates of the seminar in future numbers of RBE. Also announces a line of methodological issues that should make RBE a tool for advancing in this major facet of Epidemiology.
In the Debates section we publish an edited summary of the contributions received so far with comments on Juan Gérvas and Mercedes Pérez Fernándes' article, published in the previous number 8(2).
In the News section, there are important announcements of International Congresses that will take place in Brazil in future years, in our Epidemiology and Collective Health area, such as events by Abrasco. And there is also an interesting controversy, between the Epidemiology Committee and "Revista O GLOBO", regarding hormone therapy, climacterium and cardiovascular diseases.
Enjoy your reading.
The Editor.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
25 Oct 2005 -
Date of issue
Sept 2005
