Inaugural Issue Editorial

Our knowledge about how best to care for children and their mothers has grown and developed substantially for greater than a century. Gains made related to clean water, sanitation, appropriate nutrition, vaccine preventable illnesses and the use of antibiotics to treat infections, contribute to the tremendous progress in reducing mortality and morbidity we have seen first in the developed world and now extending into the developing world as well. To witness these ongoing positive contributions that highly trained individuals each make focused on a wide variety of diseases and health promotion efforts is truly heartening. The role of peer review journals has been significant in promoting the dissemination of this evidence throughout the professional community. Perhaps equally as remarkable is the wide availability of high quality articles via open access online journals, which hold the promise of improved clinical accomplishments through the dissemination of best practices and evidenced-based medicine approach. The Journal of Pediatrics and Mother Care is one such journal. These achievements are not earned easily however. A great deal of creativity, scholarly investigation and continual attention and investment in the nuts and bolts of the submission and publishing process must occur for the full positive impact of a journal to be realized. This recurring theme of hard work and rising to a challenges calls to mind the Haitian proverb quoted by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Tracy Kidder, in his book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, which details the work of the visionary public health physician, Paul Farmer. The proverb reads, “beyond mountains there are mountains” which captures the sense that when one engages in really important work, whether it be public health advocacy, program development or publishing one’s scholarly work, it is common to experience that once one set of challenges are addressed there are other sets of challenges that arise and which require equal vigor and creativity to address obstacles or barriers that may arise. This analogy applies aptly to the tireless work of Dr. Farmer at meeting the needs of the vulnerable in Haiti, but it can, in a less dramatic but similarly important way, also apply to the persistent academic and clinically impactful hard work that we witness among investigators and leaders of pediatric and maternal care. These highly respected colleagues, invested significantly in achieving the vision of developing further understanding of the diseases that confront mothers and their children as well as address the effectiveness of health promotion efforts in the maternal and child health realms.