Dear Reader,

As you read through this third issue of PH: The Yale Journal of Public Health, we hope that you seriously consider one of its central themes: the politics of health. Health care, like any other major issue of national and global concern, is deeply politicized, and with the advent of contentious medical technologies and complex systems of insurance and providers, it is more prominent in politics today than ever before. There is perhaps an instinctive reaction to be off-put by the politicization of health, since most people, in all parties, agree on the virtue of a healthy population. We ask readers to consider the issues presented in each article, while keeping in mind that American health care can't escape Washington - that decisions about who gets what in our society are always at the heart of political battle and cannot be avoided or wished away. Indeed, we must ask: Should health care be considered a basic American right guaranteed to all citizens? If so, since new and expensive treatments arrive each year, how do we determine as a society what level of care meets that basic standard? Is health care a commodity that is best distributed through an open market? And finally, what institutions set the global health agenda in today's world - with increasing concern for worldwide humanitarian issues and a shrinking world in which one continent's outbreak can more easily than ever become America's epidemic, should we be rethinking how we view global public health?

With this third issue, we also want to thank our founding and now departing editorial board. The PH movement has spread more rapidly than we could have hoped for, and as we finish our tenure, we look forward to seeing the continuing legacy of PH provoke discussion of public health among college students both here at Yale and nationwide. Feelings of powerlessness are often the first steps to feelings of apathy; we hope that students continue to develop a stronger understanding of the diverse issues in public health today, and with it a stronger commitment to work for local, national, and global change. We ask you to become involved, become educated, so we can work together to tackle these challenging issues with confidence and optimism.

We hope that the pages ahead will elucidate the diversity of issues represented by public health in a time of political tension, and we encourage you to keep reading.

Sincerely,


    
David Steinberg         Matthew Wilson