From The Editors

Dear Colleagues,

It’s our great pleasure to present to you the fourth issue of the Journal of Health Inequalities. This issue closes the second full year of our publication activity. We are particularly proud to announce that the Journal successfully went through the evaluation of the ICI Journals Master List 2016 and was awarded an ICV (Index Copernicus Value) of 83.17.
ICI Journal Master List is an evaluation system of journals from the field of science, technology and medicine. The ranking is based on a number of parameters grouped in 4 overarching categories: standards and stability, digitalisation, internationalisation, cooperation. The ICV has become a widely recognised measure of appraising scientific journals. The ICI Journal Master List 2016 includes 71 Polish medical, health, and physical activity science journals, with their score ranging from 40 to 160, The Journal of Health Inequalities with the score of 83,17 finds itself in the middle of the ranking – a significant achievement for a publication that has only existed for two years. This is of course only the first step in ensuring the proper evaluation of our journal’s scientific quality. In the coming months we expect to be assigned points by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland, and to be included in the Clarivate Analytics Emerging Sources Citation Index. The next steps will be to become included in the Journal Citation Reports and to obtain an impact factor.
We would like to point your attention to several articles in this issue. First of all, in 2017 we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maria Skłodowska-Curie, the eminent physicist and chemist, and winner of two Nobel prizes. One of her key areas of activity in the later part of her life was mobilising support for the creation of a network of scientific institutions dedicated to solving the puzzle of cancer treatment and establishing a strong fundament for cancer control. In the 1920s and 1930s she was the driving force behind the establishment of numerous radium institutes around the world. Our article tells the story of the institute whose creation Madame Skłodowska saw as her ‘greatest dream’ – the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Memorial Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology in Warsaw, Poland (see pages 174-176).
Two papers in our new issue outline the dramatic decline in tobacco smoking (pages 118-122) and lung cancer mortality rates in Poland in the last decades (pages 123-126). They are accompanied by two articles helping to explain these successful developments – one focusing on the attempts to create a positive atmosphere for smoking cessation in Poland through mass education campaigns (see article: The Health Promotion Foundation’s appeal on International No Smoking Day on pages 138-140), and the other exploring the role of capacity building among medical doctors for tobacco dependence treatment (see article: The role of the Health Promotion Foundation in building capacity to treat tobacco dependence in Poland: past, present and future on pages 127-132). Another article of particular interest, and one also helping to understand the continuing positive trends in Poland and many other European countries, is the account of the dissemination of the European Code Against Cancer by the Association of European Cancer Leagues (pages 162-166).
As always, we would like to thank all authors and collaborators who contributed to the current issue of the Journal, and all those who have supported us for the past two years in ensuring the increasing quality of our publication.

Witold A. Zatoński
Andrzej Wojtyła