This issue of the Journal of Ambulatory Care Management (JACM) sees the beginning of a new feature. We are actively soliciting original papers that reflect an increasingly challenging reality that all ambulatory healthcare professionals face: delivering the best possible services under settings of conflict. JACM seeks to publish managerial and/or health services research articles that pertain to this broad issue wherever the care is delivered-in the United States or anywhere else in the world. I define conflict broadly ranging from the obvious of providing humane care to people on both sides of an armed conflict to one that tries to deliver care under settings of significant physical and/or psychological stress. In this issue, we inaugurate this theme with an important article in the latter vein that documents options for providing coordinated care to individuals who are jailed in our increasingly overcrowded penal system. Tom Lincoln and colleagues have provided us with an impressive road map, albeit one that is fraught with challenges and difficulties-as is appropriate in any effort to improve ambulatory care under settings of conflict. I am confident that this article will stimulate other submissions.

The other articles in this issue of JACM highlight changes in roles of ambulatory care professionals (the article by Ahmed et al), a continuation from the last issue of the series of articles of community health centers (Falik et al) and an article that delves into the nexus between health services research and action as it pertains to physician involvement in public health insurance (Gold et al). We also continue our series on health status measurement and the delivery of ambulatory care with articles by Hankin et al., medical care utilization by VA ambulatory care patients; Mansell et al., one on the illness burden of alcohol-related disorders among VA patients and another validating the Primary Care Alcohol Severity Measure; and Spiro et al., posttraumatic stress disorder and health status among VA patients.

Lastly, we conclude this issue with our regular columns "Physicians for Human Rights" and "TROT Line: Live and Direct From the Republic of Texas."

Norbert Goldfield, MD, Editor