Journal of Prevention - Introducing the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Prevention (formerly The Journal of Primary Prevention)

The Journal of Primary Prevention enters a new era. The journal begins the year of 2022 as the Official Journal of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) and receives an expansion of its scope: Journal of Prevention.

The new Editor-in-Chief is Zila M. Sanchez (Zila van der Meer Sanchez), PhD. Dr. Sanchez is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, in Brazil. She is the head of the Graduate (Master and Doctoral) Program in Public Health at the same institution.

Her field of research involves mainly the prevention of substance use among adolescents and its complex coexistence with socio-economic conditions, bullying, and mental health symptomatology. She has been the principal investigator of several grants intended to evaluate the results of governmental prevention programs in Brazil. Alcohol policy as an environmental prevention strategy is also her field of research.

Dr. Sanchez has published over 130 peer-reviewed papers in the past two decades, was responsible for innovative data collection strategies and complex statistical analysis. She was seated in several committees and served as a consultant for UN agencies. Additionally, she has worked in preventive practices in vulnerable communities since the age of 16. More recently, jointly with her team, she produced the informative website www.previna.info, which aims to translate scientific evidence in the field of prevention into information accessible to the population of Portuguese-speaking countries.

Dr. Sanchez served as an Associate Editor at the journals BMC Public Health and Plos One for several years, facilitating the transition to Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Prevention