It is a great honor for us to be elected as Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine (EHPM), official journal of the Japanese Society for Hygiene.

Since the first publication in 1996, EHPM has been published as one of the major journals in the field of environmental medicine and public health. EHPM is open to original research papers as well as short communications in all branches of environmental health and preventive medicine from authors throughout the world. High-quality reviews from leading experts have also been published.

At 2009, the China office began working as an editorial office in an effort to encourage the submission of manuscripts and to introduce scientific achievements from East Asia. After 2012, EHPM became an online journal. Faster time from submission to publication, flexibility with regard to the number of papers published per issue, reduction of the cost are benefits of the online journal.

Rapid economic growth has caused global environmental problems and health disorders originating in the environment. Environmental influences on human health are through exposures to physical, chemical, and biological risk factors. Especially, reducing the risk of adverse health effects to future generations is an important issue. EHPM welcomes all the subjects of environmental studies, both conducted on experimental and epidemiological bases.

The twenty-first century is thought to be an era of preventive medicine. The term preventive medicine has been employed in a broad sense including health promotion, treatment and specific protection. Compared to treating illness after it occurs, preventing illness will place less of a burden not just on the individual but will also be less expensive for the nation. The scope of EHPM is applied to broad fields of preventive medicine including maternal and child health, mental health, occupational health, rehabilitation as well as communicable and non-communicable diseases. Indeed, the scope of EHPM is very wide as expressed in the title of the journal.

EHPM serves as a resource to Society members and others to read about the latest exciting research in the field of environmental health and preventive medicine. Upcoming leaders in various scientific fields are becoming members of the editorial boards in EHPM. In addition, a large number of active researchers from all over the world serve as reviewers for EHPM. In 2016, EHPM will reach a big turning point by having the first journal’s impact factor (IF). This makes EHPM more attractive magazine. We really appreciate the effort of the researchers of the sociomedical field. We hope that IF score of EHPM will rise by the papers from the wide scientific field and raise presence of EHPM as an Asian keystone journal.

On behalf of the members of the Editorial Board, we sincerely wish to submit the fruitful products of your research and hope to keep an active interest to our journal. We strongly encourage colleagues to consider EHPM when looking for a fair and meaningful place to submit the manuscripts. Our doors are always open, and we will always welcome your input.