Invited commentary: Continuing to loosen the constraints on epidemiology in an age of change-A comment on McMichael's "prisoners of the proximate"

Published in 1999, McMichael's "Prisoners of the Proximate: Loosening the Constraints on Epidemiology in an Age of Change" (Am J Epidemiol. 1999;149(10):887-897) outlined an exciting vision for epidemiology as the field that that can help us better understand the drivers of population health so that we may intervene, paving the way for healthier populations. McMichael's paper remains today what it was when it was first published: clear, thoughtful, provocative, and usefully prescriptive in its call to action. McMichael identified 4 constraints facing epidemiology. The field has risen to this challenge and addressed some of these constraints. I discuss how successful (or not) we have been in addressing each of these 4 challenges.