Dr Elizabeth (Lee) Ford-Jones: Closing the book on a decade devoted to the Canadian Paediatric Society journal

Abstract

After more than 10 years in a leadership role with Paediatrics & Child Health, Dr Elizabeth (Lee) Ford-Jones is stepping down to focus her passion on social paediatrics. Lee’s energy, enthusiasm and ability to convince one and all of the importance of Paediatrics & Child Health will be greatly missed. From the debut of Paediatrics & Child Health in 1996, Lee was keen on the vision for this new and very different journal. In 1998, she agreed to join the Editorial Board as an Associate Editor and a year later, she became the Senior Associate Editor responsible for the review process. All the while, she continued her duties at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario. Lee helped Paediatrics & Child Health grow. Not only did she do a stellar job at editing, she worked assiduously to encourage many new authors to rework their articles until it was ready for publication. She also consistently and repeatedly beat the drums across the country selling the mission of our journal, encouraging many initially dubious academic paediatricians of the importance of writing for Paediatrics & Child Health. Lee became Co-Editor-in-Chief in 2004. Throughout her tenure, Lee has been stalwart in striving for ongoing improvement in the quality of the articles, the reach of the journal and pushing for indexing in PubMed. It was only with great reluctance that I accepted her resignation, effective this spring, but Lee wants to focus her time and energy on furthering social paediatrics at The Hospital for Sick Children. She will be truly missed for her strong voice supporting the mission of the journal – education and advocacy – for her ideas, for her support of young authors, and for her repeated reminders to us – reality checks, if you will – of the ongoing plight of so many children and youth in Canada. Dr Elizabeth (Lee) Ford-Jones