Public health journals' public health perspective

Aim. In this study, we aimed to assess the content and public health perspective of the articles published in four public health journals with the highest impact factor in 2007. Materials and methods. A web based search was conducted among the four journals (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, European Journal of Public Health, and Annual Review of Public Health). Totally, 775 articles in four journals were searched. Journals’ name, content, number of articles published, authors’ country and affiliation, articles’ name, content, target group, duration, etc were basic variables used during the study. Web search was completed between August and October, 2008.SPSS 15.0 statistical program was used for analysis. Findings. Impact factors of the journals varied between 1,910 and 8,978. Four hundred and three journals of the total (52,0%) were published in the American Journal of Public Health. Sixty percent (n=462) of the articles were original article. The study population was adults in 431 articles (63,1%) and all age groups in 130 articles (19,0%). The content evaluation stated health promotion (22,8%), communicable diseases (14,0%), health administration (11,0%) as the most popular research themes. Majority of the articles (93,3%) were from developed regions of the world. The content of the articles were quite parallel to the priorities of the World Health Organization. Besides to the regular publications, six supplement journals were published. The supplements’ theme was basically about health promotion including HIV-AIDS, tobacco control, and violence. One of the supplements was on disaster management. Conclusion. This study gave clues about the world’s public health approach via the most popular public health journals. However, the existent studies were from developed regions and this highlights a need to enlarge the approaches in a more global perspective. Key words: Public Health, Journal, Impact factor