Brighter days ahead!

CSP received more than 2,200 article submissions in 2016. This volume reiterates the journal’s importance as a channel for science publication in Public Health and encourages us as Editors to renew our commitment to publishing articles that explore socially relevant research issues with creativity and diversity 1. Throughout 2016, we extended our policy of opening the journal’s pages to current political and economic issues. In the Perspectives section we published 14 papers addressing current themes, from environmental problems 2,3,4,5 to gender issues 6,7. We also organized three Thematic Sections on topics with major impact on society and the scientific community: (i) Outsourcing and Health, (ii) Zika and Pregnancy; and (iii) Fiscal Austerity, Rights, and Health. Importantly, while the theme of Zika and Pregnancy highlights the need to guarantee women’s ample access to safe contraception and care for their affected infants, the journal’s analyses of the fiscal regime point to substantial cuts in health spending in the coming years. Reactivation of the Interview section could not have enjoyed a better new start than with Professor Ezra S. Susser welcoming our Editor-in-Chief Marilia Sá Carvalho at Columbia University (USA) for a fruitful exchange of ideas on causality and other current topics in Epidemiology 8. But 2016 was a difficult year. We joined the struggle in the defense of democracy and social rights, opening the pages of CSP to analyses and reflections on the current political moment in Brazil 9. Our commitment is to truth and science. We will confront the age of “post-truth” politics 10 with the necessary seriousness, but also with the courage to join in the controversy, making all possible efforts 11. It is a daunting struggle, against weapons like unfounded allegations and undue exposure, aimed at silencing voices that defend a more egalitarian society 12, or court cases financed with vast resources aimed at discrediting and intimidating scientists 13, tactics already widely used the United States and that have begun here in Brazil as well 14. The process is called lawfare – the undue use of the legal system to persecute, coerce, and delegitimize serious institutions and researchers. Every year we choose a theme for the photos that illustrate our journal covers. In 2016 we chose the theme Encounters, impacted as we were by the rekindled drama of xenophobia in the world. For 2017 we have chosen the theme of Street Art. Open to one and all that pass Brighter days ahead!