2013 Vol.1 Iss.1 Vietnam Journal of Public Health - www.vjph.org 3 Le Vu Anh
Editor-in-Chief
Vietnam Journal of Public Health President
Vietnam Association of Public Health
Welcome to our first English Edition of the Vietnam Journal of Public Health
Public health in Vietnam is faced with challenges that are covered in all three groups of diseases including communicable diseases and nutrition; non-communicable diseases; and injury. It is the triple burden! And beyond those, social-economic and human resource factors have worsened the picture as a whole.
Yet, lessons learned from Vietnam public health research and practices in addressing these challenges are not widely shared at the global stage due to limited number of international publications from Vietnam. On the one hand, in comparison with other countries within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) appearing in Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Index Journals during the period from 1991 to 2010, publications from Vietnam only accounted for about 6%. This is far behind Thailand (21%) and Malaysia (16%). However, this is slightly higher than Indonesia (5%) and the Philippines (4.6%)1. On the other hand, access to international experiences and research findings are equally limited largely due to restriction on full-text access to most international journals.
These, of course, are reflecting on the development of academic public health in the country. It also increases the concern that universities in Vietnam are lagging behind in the global scene, both because of impacts on the quality of Vietnamese workforce and because of the detrimental effects on the image of Vietnam in higher education systems in the global context. A recent conference titled “Vietnam Higher Education in the Era of Globalization” highlighted the need to improve research productivity in order to improve the status of Vietnamese universities in the international ranking system.
The Vietnam Journal of Public Health (VJPH) English Edition was born out of this context. It strives for fostering global exchanges of knowledge between Vietnamese public health scholars and practitioners and international colleagues. VJPH’s long-term vision is to become an internationally recognized journal in the field of public health, and the journal’s international advisory board represents this ambitious goal. The journal welcomes authors from all over the world, especially those from the South and East Asian regions to submit their manuscripts as policy commentaries, original research papers drawn from quantitative and qualitative studies, systematic review and meta-analysis, review of books or PhD dissertation, and reports of lessons learned from public health programs. Quality manuscripts on any topics related to public health, in Vietnam and beyond, will be considered for publication.
EDITORIAL
Editorial
4 Vietnam Journal of Public Health - www.vjph.org 2013 Vol.1 Iss.1
The first issue of the VJPH is set to be published for the 4thAsia Pacific Conference on Public Health, which is held in Nha Trang City, Vietnam on 21stand 22ndof November, 2013. The theme of the conference is “Climate Change and Population Health” which timely reminds us that climate change has been affecting, and will continue to affect the health status of different generations and population groups, patterns of morbidity and mortality, the rich-poor health gap, social stability, and geo-political security. In this issue, we have two commentaries written by Naguib et al. and by Le Anh Tuan, two scholars working on climate change in Vietnam, who highlight some of the key public health challenges for Vietnam over the next century as it becomes one of a few lower middle income countries threatened by climate change and increased sea level. The journal also features an article by Banstola et al. on knowledge and willingness to take action on measures to reduce vulnerability to climate change in a rural setting of Nepal, another country highly vulnerable to detrimental effects of climate change. On the topic of environmental health, the first issue of VJPH features two other articles by Vietnamese authors:
one by Tran Thi Tuyet Hanh et al. on an intervention study to reduce dioxin exposure which was widely used during the Vietnam war, and another by Tran Khanh Long et al. on the burden of disease attributable to poor living environment. Two other original research articles, one from Vietnam by Tran Van Dinh et al. and another from India by Rathi and Meena that appear in this issue focusing more on traditional topics of nutrition and immunization. And yet they have contributed to the topics in their own ways, one by validating a food intake instrument and the other by examining the issue of timely immunization.
While the topics of the original research articles featured in this first issue are quite varied, they share some common features. First, they are the studies conducted in countries of the South and East Asian regions and also primarily authored by scholars from these countries. Second, they share common interests in improving public health through involving both professionals and non- professionals, and through both conventional and non-conventional measures. Therefore, last but not least, this issue also features a contribution from Michael Moore who describes evidence of using a management framework to guide successful health advocacy by the Australian Public Health Association. It is certain that many public health issues that are addressed in this first issue as well as many others that are not addressed here due to limited space will benefit from health advocates who are aware of and using this framework internationally.
While most infrastructure of the VJPH English Edition builds upon our experiences of publishing the Vietnamese Edition, which has been printed quarterly since 2004, we believe that the publication of this English edition will help us improve both English and Vietnamese Editions, and therefore serving better our increasingly diverse audience. We hope that our audience will increase and will actively contribute to this journal by sending in their manuscripts and by subscribing for free distribution of the journal. We hope you will enjoy reading our journal and help us make our vision becomes a reality.
REFERENCE
1. Nguyen TV, Pham LT. Scientific output and its relationship to knowledge economy: an analysis of ASEAN countries. Scientometrics. 2011;89(1):107–117. doi:10.1007/s11192-011-0446-2.
