Message from the new President
Hiroshi Satoh
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Hiroshi SATOH President of the Society Professor,
Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine
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H. Satoh (&) Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine
, Sendai,
Japan
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It is a great honor to be elected as the President of the
Japanese Society for Hygiene for the new triennium
beginning April 2009. After being chosen as the President at
the 79th General Assembly of the society held in Tokyo at
the end of March, I have been feeling a heavy responsibility.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, I would like to
remind you of the history of the society. It goes back to the
first meeting of the Japanese Association of Medical
Sciences held in 1902. Our society was one of the 16 affiliated
specialist medical societies. Since the Japanese Association
of Medical Sciences held a meeting every 4 years, our
society decided in 1926 to hold an annual meeting for the
advancement and promotion of the sciences in the field.
At that time, annual meetings were held together with
the Societies for Bacteriology and Parasitology, but soon
exclusively for our society. Thus, our annual meeting has
been held continuously since then, and the 80th one will be
held next year (2010).
Recently the society has developed and expanded its
activities because of the leadership and endeavors of the
successive boards of directors and the various committees.
Since our English-language journal, Environmental Health
and Preventive Medicine (EHPM), now appears in
PubMed, we look forward to EHPM being included in
MEDLINE as well. Inclusion in MEDLINE has been a
long-cherished desire. A grant for publication of scientific
research results, one of the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific
Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science, to EHPM has been received after 2 years absence.
This is because of the growing internationalization of
EHPMs authorship and circulation. Owing to the strong
driving force of former president Professor K. Morimoto,
the number of allied research project teams in which our
members perform specific research work in cooperation
with the members of other related academic and
professional societies is now more than 20.
There are, however, several problems that need to be
solved by the society. Although efforts have been made to
stimulate members of the younger generation, for example,
by giving various awards, the outcome is as yet
insufficient. The publisher of EHPM has been changed to
Springer Japan and we have been enjoying benefits such as
a larger circulation. However, the increased expense of
publishing the journal is a matter of concern. Since laws
concerning public-service corporation reforms were passed
at the end of last year (2008), it is necessary to discuss the
characteristics of the organization and its corporate status.
As we have not had a board meeting yet, the
abovementioned problems to be solved are just considerations in
my mind, and future discussions among the board of
directors and in the general assembly about various issues
will be required.
As mentioned above, the upcoming 80th annual meeting
will be held in Sendai, and I was appointed to be the
organizer of the meeting. Therefore, two secretariats were
simultaneously established for the society and the annual
meeting, and the situation in our laboratory is still a bit
disorganized. I hope that it will be under control by the
time this message appears in the journal.
Finally, I would like to express my intention to promote
the development of the society for more glorious
achievements in the future, proceeding together with every member.
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