Continuing its reputation of excellence in journalism, AFP recently accepted the Gold Award in the 2000 SNAP EXCEL Awards competition. The award was presented to AFP in the category of General Excellence, Scholarly Journals. The Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) sponsors the competition, which this year brought in 810 entries, to recognize excellence in association publishing. The judging in this category was based on evaluation of two consecutive issues for the best writing, content design and overall packaging in a peer-reviewed journal.

It's nice to know that a jury of peers from other associations has selected AFP as the most outstanding journal of the year. If you take a close look at the November 15, 1999, and December 1999 issues, the ones that AFP submitted for the competition, you'll see why the judges were impressed. Carefully packaged in a cover that was designed through the combined efforts of AFP staff and graphic artists and painstakingly decorated by leading medical illustrators, the journal offers a well-balanced diet of pertinent clinical reviews, abstracts of scientific articles from other journals, clinical news and special features that cover a gamut of practical information for family physicians and other health care providers.

The cover illustration for the December 1999 issue, showing key concepts in the evaluation and treatment of angina, was in itself an award-winning piece by artist John Karapelou. Mr. Karapelou, a board-certified freelance medical artist (CMI) based in Columbus, Ohio, accepted a certificate of merit for this cover illustration at the Association of Medical Illustrators annual conference. The award was based on meritorious achievement in editorial illustration as determined by a panel of jurors.

The airbrush and acrylic illustration by Mr. Karapelou (reproduced above) is a color-harmonized integrated montage showing an initial ECG treadmill stress test (lower left), follow-up nuclear perfusion studies of myocardial blood flow to locate ischemic areas (center) and balloon angioplasty treatment of a coronary artery (right). The two nuclear perfusion images show a myocardial area underperfused during exercise and normal at rest, indicating a reversible condition treatable with angioplasty.

Complementing AFP's fine cover art is a wealth of illustrations that highlight the clinical review articles. Both the cover illustrations and the article illustrations are directed by David Klemm, AFP's art coordinator based in the Department of Educational Media at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C., whose artistic insights contribute immeasurably to the quality of medical illustration in the journal.

Of course, the main staple of the journal—the clinical review articles—are physician-written, peer-reviewed pieces that focus on timely subjects; angina, diabetes, stroke, nephrolithiasis, sleep apnea, low back pain, social anxiety disorder, and domestic violence are just some of the topics that come up in the two award-winning issues and represent a small cross section of topics covered in the journal. AFP's staff of nearly 20 medical editors analyzes readers' needs and solicits articles and other material to keep the content on target. AFP's Leawood, Kan., editorial and production staff turn raw manuscript into the beautifully written and designed pages that appear in every issue. Many thanks to the countless artists, authors, editors and production staff who give this journal SNAP, crackle and pop.