The Ebola epidemic and translational public health.

Several weeks ago while preparing material for the next regular issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, I requested Dr. Skip Burkle to prepare a commentary from the global public health perspective on the current West African Ebola epidemic. As usual, Dr. Burkle provided a superb article that accompanies this editorial. Discussions of this among colleagues resulted in an outpouring of support and multiple offers to provide commentaries on different aspects of the Ebola virus and the West African epidemic. The volume of material available and promised led to the decision to electronically publish in a timely manner an open-ended special issue on Ebola that would mainly be a compilation of commentaries presented in roughly chronological order.