EDITORIAL

Aviation medicine in the Australasian region is experiencing a new lease of life in recent times, most particularly evident in the enthusiasm for participation in space activities. Recently the Australian Space Agency has formed and many of ASAM’s members are involved in supporting Australia’s growth capacity in health sciences in this area. This is reflected in the submissions to our journal this year, and which I hope will continue in future volumes.

On the civilian front, changes have occurred in the way we do aeromedical fitness assessment, with designated aviation medical examiners (DAMEs) being given more responsibility and autonomy in self-issuing class 2 certificates. As such, DAMEs are likely to be having a much more in-depth involvement with complex and interesting cases, and I encourage DAMEs to share your experience by providing case studies which will be happily published!

This is the second year that JASAM has been an open access, exclusively online journal and we hope this benefits local practitioners in having their work relatively easily available to the wider aviation medicine community. I would like to specifically thank our peer reviewers, whose time and advice is much appreciated in ensuring good quality submissions.

As always I thank all our contributors and encourage others to submit papers for publication in the new year!