EDITORIAL EDITORIAL

RBCDH is in its 17^th year, heading towards majority. It was conceived in 1991 by a group originated in a relationship between professors from the Maternal and Child Health Department of the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP-USP) and external professionals. The objective of the group, called CDH (the initials for Human Growth and Development, in Portuguese) and founded in 1987, was to join theory and practice. The journal was born from this purpose, maintaining it up to the present day. In 2005, the journal's periodicity, which was of two annual issues, increased to three.

In a survey of the first 4 years of its publication, from 1991 to 1994 (93 articles) and of the last 3 years, from 2003 to 2006 (102 articles), the approached themes do not differentiate the two phases of the journal: they deal with the area of health and education, with many articles about health promotion by means of education, focusing on day-care centers, family environment and relationships, parenting, social environment and public policies relating to health and education. Questions referring to interdisciplinary areas continue being published, such as the questions of adoption, shelter, violence and police stations, among others.

The articles emphasize child development, including early childhood, but there has been an increasing number of articles focusing on adolescents, women's and men's condition as parents; some deal with the elderly. Themes like obesity, sexuality, motor, visual, and hearing development, development of the mother-child relationship, of the hospitalized child are recurrent. Many articles refer to issues related to hospitalization, the Family Health Program, maternity, preterm newborn care unit, the kangaroo mother program, breastfeeding, SUS (the National Health System), questions deriving from physical deficiencies. Topics involving specific diseases are rare, but there are articles about autism and asthma, with emphasis on the relationship and the context. Play activities, toy libraries, theories on playing, maternal response are frequent themes. Questions deriving from a cultural approach to development have found increasing space in the journal's pages. Nursing has contributed with themes such as bottle-feeding to street children. The area of psychology predominates, with increasing presence of nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nutrition and dentistry, and of articles coming from the area of public health.

Thus, the articles that have been sent characterized the journal as making the relationship between the theory and the practice of the areas of health and education, focusing on people and their relationships with other people and/or the surrounding environment.

The journal has approximately 50% of Original Research articles, 20% of Experience Report, 20% of Current Comments and 10% of Review or other. Seventy-five percent of the articles are qualitative.

The journal's longevity is due to its national importance, receiving articles from the federal universities of Pará, Bahia, Alagoas, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, São João del Rey, Santa Catarina, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília; from the Catholic Universities of São Paulo, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul; besides these, from the Institute of Collective Health/UFBA, Fiocruz, Santa Casa (São Paulo), UNIFESP, the School of Nursing of USP-SP and of USP-Ribeirão Preto; and also from UNIFRAN, UNICAMP, UNIBAN, UNISantos, Ruy Barbosa/Bahia, FEN, UNESP, Federal University of São Carlos, Universidade Luterana do Paraná, UNIVALE. Thirty-eight institutions contributed to the journal in the last three years, not to mention the presence of the University of São Paulo's School of Public Health, Institute of Psychology, School of Medicine, CDH, and of authors from several countries: France, Colombia and Norway in the last three years, and Peru, Argentina, Mexico and the United States in the previous years.

The journal is classified as "C Internacional", "A Nacional" in Psychology, "B Nacional" in Collective Health. It is digitalized and can be accessed in the portal of FSP-USP. Besides the indexation in the following databases: LILACS, INDEX-PSI, CLASE, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, we have been admitted into BVS-Psi.

The present issue exemplifies what was mentioned above. It is an issue about child care, specially in public health, concerning preterm newborns, breast-feeding, enuresis, cognitive, emotional and motor development, teething, play behavior, parental practices, family relationship; care provided for education and culture; for the child and its rights; for behavior disorders detected at school. Three articles focus on adolescents' sexual and reproductive life. The articles come from Pará, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, Santa Catarina and São Paulo, and were written by public health professionals, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, pediatricians, nutritionists, and by professionals of the collective mental health, maternal and child health, and epidemiology areas.

This is the "mature" profile of our journal, characterized by interdisciplinarity "in action", so that cross-disciplinary works have a space.

We would like to thank all the people who have enabled us to achieve this stage of development.

Elaine Pedreira Rabinovich and Paulo Rogério Gallo
Assistant Editors