Over the past few years, we have all become more familiar than we would probably like to be with uncertainty and ongoing upheaval in our work as health care professionals. All at once, we have had to cope with tumult caused in large part by the rapid explosion of technology, the projected wholesale demographic shifts facing our nation, and the growing intensity of the spotlight of public accountability on health care costs and outcomes. Each of these new developments has made our jobs ever more challenging on a daily basis.

Although these factors have made our professional lives more stressful and difficult in many ways, they also represent unusual opportunities to craft interventions that promise to improve the health of our communities and nation and to prevent disease. What is required is some out-of-the-box thinking, made possible when individuals let go of their fears and anxieties surrounding the uncertainty and change in our industry. Having purged ourselves of such restrictive and counterproductive thoughts, we can reframe the current health care context in a more positive way that emphasizes creativity and capitalizing on opportunities.

For example, the technological revolution offers unprecedented potential for outreach and education in the prevention of disease and the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle. It further extends hope that new interventions might be developed more rapidly for our most nettlesome public health scourges, such as HIV, and that new generations of cures and increasingly less invasive procedures might be developed. Similarly creative approaches are needed to address health concerns more common to all of our lives, such as addiction and fitness.

In fact, the health care industry has been among the most forward thinking and creative in the last century, witnessing tremendous advances in humankind's ability to manage disease and raise awareness of healthy behaviors. Each of the 20th century's most significant breakthroughs was the cumulative result of all the groundbreaking thinking and research that had come before. With this in mind, and with new tools and knowledge at our disposal, there is little doubt that innovative strategies will emerge in the coming years to further enhance the nation's overall quality of life.

Picking up on this theme, this issue of Family and Community Health, (25:3), focuses on creative approaches that promise to enhance the health of our communities. Properly viewing the challenges facing health care primarily as opportunities rather than as threats, the authors have embraced a creative mindset in proposing and conducting some uncommon research. I invite you to review and consider their efforts in the pages that follow.