Dear Reader,
This year marks a period of growth for Tuftscope. The TuftScope website, the journal’s health news
weblog (tuftscope.blogspot.com), and our presence on Twitter (@tuftscope) and Facebook have provided
Tuftscope with a solid foundation to expand our printed publication’s exposure to not only Tufts University
but to the global community as well. This will not be easy, but it is necessary that Tuftscope incorporates
our past achievements in obtaining well-written and well-researched articles and our future objectives
to showcase these types of articles to a broader audience.
Some of these changes include the recruitment of a new generation of underclassman staff members,
the appointment of a Research Highlights Editior, Ariel Lefland, and New Media Editors, Alejandra Garcia
and Alison Pinkerton, and an increase in the number of issues this year from 2 to 4. These ambitious aims
have pushed our staff to produce higher quality of work to measure up to the higher quantity of articles
we have received.
To showcase local health care experts, Managing Editor Hallie Abelman spoke with the president of
Boston Health Care for the Homeless, Dr. Jim O’Connell, who was recently awarded the Albert Schweitzer
Prize for Humanitarianism. Over the course of his 27 year career with this organization, Dr. O’Connell has
become a pioneer in the field of homeless health care.
On a global health scale, the original articles by Jonathan Lis and Alana Fruauff offer insight into the
health care systems in places such as The Gambia and Nepal. Additionally, the fascinating article written
by Alon Slutzky, a current Tufts undergraduate, explores the health effects of the long-term exposure to
arsenic in Bangladesh.
Next semester, in junction with the Tufts course, EPIIC: Global Health and Security, we plan to publish
an issue featuring reports by the students who are taking this class. This issue will be released during
EPIIC’s symposium (February 2013) and will hopefully demonstrate the captivating research conducted
by these students this fall semester.
We are committed to publishing stimulating and informative articles that broaden the scope of our
readers’ knowledge on health-related topics. We feel that they have acheived this goal with our issue this
semester. We thank the entire staff of writers, reviewers, editors, and layout editors, without whom there
would certainly not be a journal of this caliber. We also thank our faculty advisers for their continued
guidance and advice.
We hope you enjoy the issue!
Sincerely,
Eriene-Heidi Sidhom & Brian Wolf