The Journal Saúde e Sociedade begins 2015 with many challenges that are characteristics of new starts: maintaining the journal's traditions of success and installing a new scientific editor.

The first challenge is to continue the important achievements of previous years which have contributed to the quality of the journal, making it stand out among scientific journals that develop dialogue between the social and human sciences and health sciences.

Over the last ten years, under the scientific editors Helena Ribeiro, professor at the Faculty of Public Health, University of São Paulo (FSP/USP), and Cleide Lavieri Martins, member of the São Paulo Public Health Association (Associação Paulista de Saúde Pública APSP) and also an FSP/USP professor, the journal established itself; increased the number of submissions and the variety of research topics and debates; diversified and increased the number of institutions and nationalities that contributed with its articles; and was indexed in various internationally recognized scientific journals bases, among other important achievements.

The second challenge is installing the new scientific editor, whose work began with this first issue of 2015. This second challenge is two-fold. Maintaining, with a certain boldness, this commitment to the extent that what is sought is to consolidate the journal's achievements while, at the same time, expanding upon them, especially in terms of producing reflexive and critical scientific knowledge on all manner of topics and objects from the field of public health, inspired by the social and human sciences viewpoint. Thus, the dialogue between the new editors, based on converging proposals is essential, as well as between the institutions they represent- the FSP/USP and the APSP -, between the associated editors who compose the new editorial corps and the authors of the articles who collaborate with the journal. There is also the need to make advances in the various possibilities for debate and exchange of ideas, reaffirming the journal's scope and editorial policy in a multiple context of very different actors, institutions, interests, thinking and practices intrinsic to an inter-disciplinary field like public health. This challenge, perhaps the greatest faced, has, however, driven and ensured the richness and diversity of the Saúde e Sociedade journal's scientific output, as can be seen in the 29 articles of this issue. They discuss the role of the State in public health policy; public spending; social management and participation in the Unified Health System (SUS); computerizing and using health indicators; urgency and emergency care networks; health care and access to health care services; shared diagnosis in primary care; qualifying primary health care; competencies in promoting health; bio-ethical aspects in the Family Health Strategy; community health workers' quality of life; risky behavior; children's mental health; Center of Psychosocial Attention Center (CAPS) referrals; experience of carers for those with mental illness; imagery in Social Psychology; technological organization of work in oral health in the SUS; and ethics and the labor market in oral health. There are also studies on contemporary environmental health issues, such as selective waste collection by waste pickers; advertising of insecticides for domestic use and public health implications; and an ethnographic study of soil-transmitted helminthes. Topics and issues that are extremely relevant to public health are thus identified by the authors and approached from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, in different national and international contexts, always highlighting the bringing together of human and social sciences.

We hope, thus, to continue this debate and exchange of ideas, reaffirming the place of Saúde e Sociedade journal in the challenging dialogue between different areas of knowledge within the field of health, between theoretical and empirical scientific production and between reflections on Political-institutional and professionals' practices.

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