Charting the future from the past.

This issue of the Journal contains the first of a series of Special Historical Notes that we will publish in 2009. The contribution by Lyons and Malowany identifies values embodied by the founders of the Canadian Journal of Public Health and of CPHA which have withstood the passage of time and are still central to public health practice today. The first of these is interdisciplinarity. Then, as now, it was understood that the major health problems of the day could only be addressed effectively with the contribution of professionals from many disciplines. Another value that emerges is the focus on interventions, both at the population and the individual level. It is good to be reminded that interventions are key to achieving our mission. The recent Population Health Intervention Research Initiative for Canada1 is a much-needed and overdue development to create the evidence on which public health interventions need to be based. That early CPHA documents mention population and individual level interventions also points to a reality that endures today: that of the complementarity of health care delivery and public health. The public health system needs to engage and develop close working relationships with health care delivery systems and with local practitioners who need the support of public health and of community resources to improve preventive care and the longterm management of chronic conditions. One last thing struck me from the early days of the CJPH and CPHA which carries important lessons for contemporary public health. Although the first editors declared the need for “modern health officers to be both scientists and philosophers”, this did not stop them from stating that the interests of CPHA included among others “...the popularization of eugenics...”.2 The Dictionary of Public Health suggests that this sophistical pseudo-science was popular in some circles of public health up to the 1960s.3 Historians can teach us to understand how the past can make sense of the present and prepare for the future. In addition, even with the best of intentions, science can drift off to dangerous waters and public health as much as any other field requires the critical voice of philosophers and ethicists to help navigate the shoals of modern population health research and practice. With this in mind, I am happy to announce that the Journal will begin a regular series of commentaries on public health ethics and on the history of public health starting in 2010. I invite you to contribute to these commentaries.