EDITORIAL
José da Rocha Carvalheiro
This is the first issue of the year in which we have finally become available for virtual access in the SciELO database. This fact gives us greater international visibility, which will inevitably improve our classification based on impact rates. We hope that the (good quality) Brazilian epidemiological productionthe main reason for our existencewill be in fact appreciated in the foreign academic and service environment. Somehow, this is already happening, given we have received papers written in many countries, especially, but not only, in Latin America, the major target of our decision to publish in Spanish, in addition to Portuguese and English. We would not receive papers if we were not read or known in these locations.
One of the advantages of this new type of publication is to allow the expansion of debate on internationally controversial issues involving authors from other parts of the world. It is the case of the Brazilian effort, as mentioned in an issue of RBE last year, to comply strictly with the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and to avoid double standards, no matter what, such as more lenient requirements for developing countries. It is the case of controlled clinical trials, which are required to have a single registration, as advocated by scientific editors of the most prestigious medical journals worldwide. RBE will make an effort to convey the vision of our scientific environment in these debates, and be open to the controversies that will certainly surface.
From now on, we will seek to expand our process for publishing studies. When technically possible, they will be published in virtual media as soon as they are finally approved by our peer review system. Authors will notice this change due to the need of regularly including "publications in scientific journals" in their CVs. We will continue to publish our quarterly hard copies, comprising articles approved in the period between issues.
This issue includes nine articles, from institutions located in all macro regions of Brazil, except for the north. Three studies are from the northeast (Ceará, Paraíba and Piauí) and three others are from the southeast (two from São Paulo, one is from Minas Gerais), one from the south (Santa Catarina), and another one from the center west (Goiás); in addition to a conceptual study, authored by a professor from São Paulo. This classification is based on the origin of data and on the geographical source of the concerns that motivated authors. The diversity of the institutional affiliation of the teams is even greater, which makes it possible to say that, as it has usually been the case, only two studies have individual authors, one of them the already mentioned conceptual study. The average number of authors is 3.6, and 63 % of the 32 authors are women. We do not wish to comment on the latter and will let readers interpret the information. However, the fact that almost all papers are based on original data obtained directly by authors or on data collected from secondary sources cannot go unnoticed.
The conceptual study, authored by a former President of Abrasco, from the School of Medical Sciences of Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo, deals with the insertion of Social Epidemiology within the scope of the discipline and diversity of current theoretical trends.
Three studies address mortality using available registration systems and comparing them with the results achieved by their own methods. One of them, from USP, evaluates the reliability of the data of the Mortality Information System (SIM), correcting them with home interviews and looking up data from other records. The other study, from the Federal University of Ceará, that compared tuberculosis reports in the National Disease Surveillance System (SINAN) to mortality data from SIM, concluded that there is significant underreporting of the cases that evolved to death. The third study, from the Federal University of Piauí, analyzes mortality due to infectious and parasitic diseases in the last thirty years of the 20th century, in Teresina, making considerations on what they call emerging diseases (aids, dengue fever, cholera) and persevering diseases (tuberculosis, leishmaniasis).
A study from the Fundação Nacional de Saúde (National Health Foundation) and University of Brasília can be seen as an intervention study. It shows how an information campaign on the signs and symptoms of leprosy for school children led to a considerable increase in case detection rates.
A study, from UNICAMP and UNESP, both in the state of São Paulo, in addition to the Catholic University of Paraná, used typing of Candida albicans specimens isolated from the oral cavity of healthy children in a city in the interior of the state of São Paulo, to define its routes of propagation in children of several socioeconomic categories.
Oral health status is the object of a cross-sectional study including all the elderly living in institutions in Goiânia. It was conducted by professionals of the City Health Department and the Federal University of Goiás and showed its precariousness.
A group of researchers from São Paulo (UNIFESP and USP), associated with others from the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) and from the Vale do Itajaí University (UNIVALI), relates the lipid profile to obesity in low-income school children in a city of Santa Catarina.
Another group of researchers with extremely heterogeneous institutional origins discusses the status of Sanitary Surveillance in cities of the State of Paraíba, by relating the procedures carried out by the regulatory agency and the sanitary scenario of the locations studied. The authors belong to the National Supplementary Health Agency (ANS), National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), Ministry of Health (MS), Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and University of Brasília.
As usual, we hope you all enjoy reading these papers. This time, we extend our wish to those who access us through the SciELO database.
The Editor
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
12 June 2007 -
Date of issue
Mar 2005
