JHCPU 17.1 Suppl. February 2006 Theme: Kellogg/Community Voices: Community Health, Oral Health, and Tobacco Cessation      A supplement from the Kellogg/Community Voices Program (headquartered at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta) appears with JHCPU 17.1. The supplement’s Guest Editors are Drs. Ron Braithwaite, Henri Treadwell, Marguerite Ro, and Kisha Braithwaite. The supplement’s themes of practical experience developing solutions in the areas of community health, oral health, and tobacco cessation fit well with the mission of JHCPU. We are especially pleased that Morehouse’s Interim President, Dr. David Satcher, the 16th U.S. Surgeon General (and JHCPU’s founder from the period when he was President of Meharry Medical College) has contributed a Commentary. JHCPU 17.1 February 2006 Theme: Black History Month        The first installment of our seventeenth volume, this issue reflects the fact the February is Black History Month. The continuing importance of race and ethnicity as constructs in public health is reflected in most of the papers in this rich issue. Some of the articles are described here: Arthur and Katkin’s insightful editorial on the importance of recognizing ethnic sub-categories of race is matched by an empirical paper by Garbers looking at differences and similarities with respect to breast cancer screening between African American and Caribbean-born women living in New York City. Sharif and colleagues examined the availability of Spanish prescription labels in the Bronx, an area with a high density of Spanish speakers, finding that they were not always available and that small pharmacies were more likely to provide them than large chain pharmacies. (See NY Times story on this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/health/14phar.html?ex=1140584400&en=e053b262ec873b8d&ei=5070&emc=eta1  .) Walker and colleagues discuss a Howard University workshop on Globalization and Health and Furin, Farmer and colleagues a new and unique training program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston for doctors interested in focusing on disparities in poor regions nationally and internationally (see Jackie Judd’s interview with Furin at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/hcast_index.cfm?display=detail&hc=1649 ). Fowler-Brown et al.’s paper concerns research on the perceptions of Black and White adults in the rural South, young and old, of racial barriers to receiving care. Kaplan and colleagues also seek insight into the points of view of the medically underserved on racial and ethnic disparities that affect them: their focus groups with Black and Hispanic residents of the South Bronx come vividly to life in this beautifully written paper. Health educators play vital roles in stemming the progress of infections such as HIV. Dancy and colleagues investigated whether, when the target audience was low-income African American adolescent girls, mothers might be the best teachers about HIV. Their idea was a sound one and this research provides a model for improved education to prevent the spread of HIV in this highly vulnerable population. Despite the importance of race and ethnicity in public health, large data sets do not always contain reliable information about it. Long and colleagues examined existing Veterans Health Administration-based disparities research, bringing to the forefront the importance of establishing and using consistent methods for collecting data on race and ethnicity. Sambamoorthi and colleagues report that, among depressed Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetes, there are racial differences with regard to quality of mental health care in the presence of diabetes. Basu, Friedman, and Burstin, underscoring the importance of Medicaid for the common good, found that the racial/ethnic disparity associated with the risk of preventable hospitalization is significantly lower among Medicaid patients than among private fee-for-service patients. ~