North American Workshop: New Directions for Epidemiology: The Role of Journals
(OPEN TO ALL)
• Shah Ebrahim
Professor of Public Health
Department of Epidemiology & Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

New directions in epidemiolgy – role of journal editors
International Journal of Epidemiology

I have co-edited the IJE with George Davey Smith since 2000 and over this time the character and fortunes of the IJE have changed. We highlighted in our first editorial in February 2001 what we saw as the role of epidemiology in the new millennium. We highlighted the drift away of epidemiology from public health problems and an interest in new methods. Epidemiology will be best served by an approach which applies the most robust available methods to the most important health problems; the danger of allowing what can be studied according to certain methodological principles to become what is studied is a very real one. The test of new methodologies is if they lead to advances in understanding the determinants of disease among individuals and populations and contribute to their alleviation. Journals must react to the changing environment in which they function if they are to remain of relevance and survive. The future for biomedical journals, as for all science journals, remains uncertain and internet continues to change the ways in which information is disseminated and accessed. What should the IJE policy regarding the type of material we publish? We believe that serving the needs of readers, authors and the wider public audience for epidemiology requires more than repositories of scientific manuscripts. IJE’s contribution has been to raise important questions about the direction of epidemiology in editorials, debates and historical reprints. We have sought to publish material that is interesting and reflects the broad uses of epidemiology as originally proposed by Jerry Morris: community diagnosis; individual’s chances; completing the clinical picture; identifying syndromes; operational research; providing clues to causes.

Job Title: Professor of Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Main qualifications: DM, FRCP, FFPH

Research interests:  My main interests are in cardiovascular epidemiology, particularly in low and middle income countries, genetic epidemiology, and causes and prevention of disability in old age. I run the British Women’s Heart & Health Study, a national cohort of older women and also coordinate the Cochrane Heart Group that produces systematic reviews of the effects of interventions for heart diseases. I run the Indian migration study based in Lucknow, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Bangalore, examining the effects of migration on obesity and diabetes. I am a non-executive board member for the National Institute for Clinical & Public Health Excellence and chair the Wellcome Trust Populations & Public Health funding committee.