MCN is beginning its 35th year of publication with this issue. What a privilege it has been for me to be its Editor over the past 12 years!! MCN's founding Editor, Barbara Bishop, was determined to develop a clinically relevant, scholarly journal that covered both the perinatal and pediatric specialties in nursing, a feat never before attempted, and never since duplicated. MCN remains the only nursing journal that is dedicated to both of those areas of expertise, publishing articles of interest to nurses who practice all along the spectrum of maternal child health.

MCN has always published ongoing columns as well as full-length articles. In the years that I've been the Editor, these columns have included (1) our very popular debate column Second Opinion, coordinated by Dr. Heidi Krowchuk (pediatric topics) and Dr. Katie Capitulo (perinatal topics), which provides our readers with intellectually stimulating, reasoned arguments for both sides of current issues in healthcare and nursing; (2) our column Toward Evidence Based Practice, which examines research published in other journals so our readers can keep up with current literature, which is carefully authored by MCN's Editorial Board members Sia Jonsdottir, Dr. Maureen Heaman, Dr. Linda Beth Tiedje, Dr. Judy Lewis, Dr. Maaly Gumei, Dr. Laura Hayman, Dr. Terri Lipman, Dr. Judy Beal, and Dr. Arwa Oweis; (3) our column about Global Health and Nursing written by our expert Dr. Lynn Clark Callister, which consistently informs our readers about important occurrences in maternal child health all around the world; and (4) our column on Perinatal Patient Safety, which I've been told is torn out of paper copies of MCN and hung on bulletin boards in Labor and Delivery units all over the country. Quite an honor for our columnist Dr. Kathleen Simpson.

Starting with this issue of MCN, we are making two changes in our columns. We've had a wonderful column called Infant Nutrition written by Dr. Karen Morin, which has followed contemporary issues in nutrition for the past several years, helping all of you to sort through the thorny problems parents face concerning safety in feeding their infants. In this issue, that column changes its name and focus, and is becoming "Nutrition for the Family." This modification will allow Dr. Morin to write about not only infant nutrition, but also topics in childhood nutrition and maternal nutrition, expanding the focus of the column and therefore expanding your knowledge simultaneously. The other change will be in the column we have always called The New Networking, written by Dr. Patricia McCartney. This column was conceived in 1998, when I became Editor, and when nursing listservs were just being developed to network nurses together through the Internet. Dr. McCartney had created the Perinatal Nursing Discussion list and agreed to write the column that would report on her monitoring of many nursing discussion lists for the benefit of MCN's readers. Now, 10 years later, there is a whole new world of information out there on the Internet for nurses, and Dr. McCartney is expanding her column to fill its new title "Health Information Technology" (HIT). Dr. McCartney, an informatics expert, will now write about an unlimited selection of important topics in HIT in every issue of MCN. Her column will now include every conceivable component of informatics, which could have an impact on how you practice nursing. I know this column will be invaluable to all of you.

So, welcome to 2010, and to the innovations in MCN. We're so pleased that you're with us, and hope that the new things we're doing will enhance your enjoyment of and learning from this 35-year-old journal that remains current and contemporary.