Public Health Nutrition is in its seventh year, and like any
new journal it takes time for people to identify the journal as a
place to look for new material, as well as a place to publish work.
From four issues in year one, we have grown to eight issues in year
seven, and the number of papers we have published has trebled. We have
published a number of special issues that have attracted a lot of
interest, in particular one on the nutrition transition.
Our policy was to review and cite special issues as if they were
original communications. Our editorial policy has evolved over time;
we now have widened our brief to consider the evidence base for public
health action, as well as wider policy context that affects the
implementation of programmes aimed at improving health.
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“We see our role as being the forum to present and discuss the evidence linking nutrition to health, and to the application of that knowledge to improve health.”
~Professor Barrie Margetts
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We have a very wide and representative international editorial
board and it has been very satisfying to see so many good-quality
papers coming from all over the world. Our editors have played an
important part in stimulating and supporting wide international
participation.
Market research, and our own personal experience, suggested that
before we launched there was no journal that provided a forum to
discuss the work we do. Public health nutrition is a new field, and as
time has gone on it has been clear that readers increasingly
understand what we are engaged in, and see that it is relevant to
their work, both as researchers and practitioners.
The World Health Organisation has recently completed a very big
review of nutrition, activity, and health, as part of the development
of a global strategy, and many of our papers have been cited in the
reviews they have published, particularly WHO technical report series
paper 916 (diet, nutrition, and the prevention of chronic diseases).
This review reflected the growing recognition that nutrition plays an
important role in maintaining and promoting health, and that as the
global burden of chronic diseases rises, the only long-term solution
is prevention. Our journal anticipated these events and so has been
well placed to take advantage of this wider interest in public health
nutrition.
We see our role as being the forum to present and discuss
the evidence linking nutrition to health, and to the application of
that knowledge to improve health.
We see a role in developing our understanding as to how to study
these issues, from a methodological perspective, as well as how to
agree on the basis for applying evidence to action. Increasingly we
will be involved in policy and debate as to the best way to accomplish
this; and particularly to debate and explore how to develop the
optimal balance between a state/legislative framework of regulations
and control, with maximising individual choice and responsibility. It
is clear that the causes of poor nutrition-related health are complex
(including basic and underlying causes such as poverty and inequity of
access to resources such as clean water, sanitation, education, etc.),
and go beyond individuals making poor choices; local, national, and
global forces directly and indirectly affect the ability of people to
eat well.
Public Health Nutrition
Professor Barrie Margetts, Editor-in-Chief
CABI Publishing, publisher
cites
:
ccording
to a recent analysis in in-cites, the journal Public
Health Nutrition achieved the highest percent increase in
total citations in the field of Social Sciences for the
October-December 2003 bimonthly period (see 
