Dear members of DOHaD Society,

Welcome to Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. I hope that you are as pleased with its launch as I, along with the DOHaD Society Council, am. As many of you know, we have debated whether to launch a journal for some time, the overall feeling until about a year ago being that our interests and our work – by definition integrative, interdisciplinary and translational – were so widely spread that no single journal could encompass them; and that it was better to ensure that DOHaD issues were aired in a wide range of specialist journals. Many of us felt that we should defer launching a journal until the Society, and the science, were ready for it. Over the last year it has become abundantly clear that such a time has arrived. The membership of the Society has grown steadily, as has attendance at our World Congresses. The concept of DOHaD is now so widely accepted that a wide range of biomedical conferences now have specific session on it – addressing mechanisms to public health implications. Many of the major NGOs, charitable foundations and international agencies, as well as government health departments in several countries, now have DOHaD on the agenda. The media have taken DOHaD up with vigour, and it now figures in many public understanding-of-science outlets. And disciplines in which parallel intellectual developments have taken place over many years, such as developmental, evolutionary or ecological biology, anthropology and health economics, have welcomed collaborations. DOHaD is no longer an idea – it is as close as anything in science can get to being a fact.

The first publication of J DOHaD was our Supplement that coincided with the Society’s 6th World Congress in November 2009, in Santiago, Chile. This was a landmark conference. We were honoured that the opening address to the Congress was delivered by Her Excellency Ms Michelle Bachelet, President of the Repblic of Chile, a paediatrician by training and someone who has shown great interest and support for DOHaD. We were also very pleased that the closing address was given by Alvaro Erazo, Minister of Health. Chile has shown extraordinary economic growth in recent decades, and has also pioneered biomedical science and health promotion interventions, for example in nutrition. It provides a good example of how health can be promoted in a transitioning society. This is highly relevant to the rapidly rising burden of non-communicable disease (NCD) in many low income countries, a tragic consequence of the economic improvements following reductions in infectious disease. Developmental origins of NCD will be a global problem at least as big as climate change, and of course the two are interlinked in many ways.

The Society is going from strength to strength, and the calibre, influential positions and dedication of our Council, Editors and members are a testament to this. We will need every bit of this strength as governments and other organisations in the many countries (40 at present) in which we work look to us to explain the origins of NCD and to indicate possible solutions. I wish you every success in this endeavour and I am confident that with your support DOHaD Society and its new mouthpiece – J DOHaD – will meet the challenge.