From the Editors

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we present the third issue of the Journal of Health Inequalities. We would like particularly to encourage our readers to familiarise themselves with the continuation of our series on maternal and child health. A particularly alarming analysis reveals the poor level of awareness of Polish women about the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy. This stands in contrast to the awareness of the harm of smoking during pregnancy, which in Poland is at a similar level to that seen in western countries. The problem of drinking in pregnancy requires urgent intervention, and in the next issues of our journal we will explore this issue further.
Another important topic discussed in the current issue is that of health inequalities in the region of Eastern Europe. This problem is raised in this issue in paper by a group of Lithuanian scholars, including Dr. Aurelijus Veryga, the current Minister of Health of Lithuania, and by Professor Leif Aarø from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
A number of contributions pay homage to two great scientists who have passed away recently – Professor Stefania Jabłońska, one of the pioneers of research on the HPV virus, and Professor Zbigniew Strzelecki, the famous Polish demographer. We are particularly honoured that Professor Harald zur Hausen, the laureate of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, and Professor Sławomir Majewski from the Medical University of Warsaw, have accepted our invitations to share their memories of Professor Jabłońska.
We welcome the new authors who have contributed to the current issue: Professor Józef Bergier, Rector of John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biała Podlaska, Professor Janusz Szymborski from the Government Population Council, Dr. Anna Harton and Dr. Joanna Myszkowska-Ryciak from Warsaw University of Life Sciences, and Mr. Rafał Nowakowski from the Poster Museum in Wilanów. We would also like to thank returning authors, especially Professor Joanna Mazur from the Institute of Mother and Child in Warsaw. Finally, we are delighted that authors representing a number of important international organisations (including the American Cancer Society, the European Network for Smoking Prevention, the International Alliance of Patients’ Organisations, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church) have begun, or continue their collaboration with our journal.
We would like particularly to thank Mr. Scott Thompson and Mr. Richard Bialy, who watch over the quality of written English in our publications. We are still far from being fully satisfied with the quality of our editorial work, but with their invaluable input we believe that we are making progress with every new issue.
To conclude, we would like to inform our readers that the Journal of Health Inequalities will be undergoing a process of evaluation in the coming months. We are hoping that our publication will be assigned points by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. This will be the first step towards including the Journal of Health Inequalities into the Journal Citation Reports and obtaining an impact factor.

Witold A. Zatoński, Andrzej Wojtyła