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Editorial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2019

James J. James
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Editorial
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Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , August 2019 , pp. 651
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Copyright © 2019 Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 

This editorial is meant to serve as a brief update on the status of the Society and Journal and to provide an opportunity to make several important announcements

First - the Society membership numbers continue to improve, albeit slowly. We will, of course, continue to explore ways to increase both our numbers and professional diversity. Several initiatives will be announced at our Fifth Annual Meeting which will be held on August 21 to August 23 in Washington DC.

Most importantly, in addition to these initiatives we will be taking steps to give more structure to SDMPH by establishing bylaws, appointing officers and beginning the process to evolve a leadership voted by our members.

In this regard, it is truly an honor to announce that Dr. “Skip” Burkle has consented to serve as the first president of SDMPH. Anyone with any familiarity with our field is well aware of the leadership and academic credibility that Dr. Burkle will bring to our Society.

Secondly, this journal continues to expand in terms of numbers of manuscripts received, quality of publications and global reach. In fact, we have in some ways become the victim of our own success in that our editorial support structure has become overtaxed resulting in longer, and often unacceptable, processing times.

At the same time these difficulties present us with an opportunity, one we fully intend to embrace, and that is to reconfigure our editorial structure from top to bottom.

You will all hear much more on this as we evolve, but we have just recently made the first significant alteration in appointing two additional Deputy Editors—Eric Weinstein and Jeff Schlegelmilch—whom it gives me great pleasure to introduce and welcome. Eric and Jeff have hit the ground running and we have already, over the course of two weeks, seen a significant reduction in our backlog.

Finally, we are in the initial stages of increasing our global reach. In the upcoming months you will hear more on specific initiatives in the Pacific basin and the European region.

Some wonderful changes are taking place at the Society and the Journal and we invite you, the reader, to join us on the path towards global health security.

SDMPH First President Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., MD, MPH, PhD (Hon.), DTM, FAAP, FACEP.