Healthier. Fifty Thoughts on the Foundations of Population Health

Description

Fifty essays on the state of population health from a vanguard voice in the field

• A trenchant argument for the urgency of population-level interventions in health — and a strong rebuttal to those who question it
• Appropriate for a wide range of readers, from students embarking on a career in public health and health sciences to seasoned practitioners and scholars
• A collection of essays that combines unity and a clarity of purpose with granular coverage of diverse subject matter
• Of interest to health policy makers, civil servants, workers at state and local departments of health, and students in public health and health sciences

Public health can rightly claim its share of victories: healthier cities, widespread sanitation, broader availability of nutrient-rich food, and reductions in violence and injury. But for all these gains, today we face a new set of challenges, ones complicated by political and professional shifts that threaten to fundamentally change the health of populations. 

Healthier is both an affirmation and an essential summary of the current challenges and opportunities for those working in and around the improvement of population health. The essays contained here champion an approach to health that is consequentialist and rooted in social justice — an expansion of traditional, quantitatively motivated public health that will both inform and inspire any reader from student to seasoned practitioner. 

Galea's cogent, incisive arguments guarantee that his perspective, currently at the forefront of public health, will soon become conventional wisdom.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Dedication
1. Introduction
Section 1. The foundations of population health 
2. The aspirations and strategies of public health
3. Social justice, public health
4. On mechanisms vs. foundations
5. What health, for whom?
6. Pasteur's quadrant and population health
7. Producing health over a lifetime
8. Shaping values, elevating health
9. Towards a culture of health
10. Paternalism: unavoidable, perhaps desirable
11. At the heart of it all, empathy
12. On courage
Section 2. The world as it is 
13. More hate, more harm
14. The burden of incarceration
15. Finding a way out: suicide and the health of populations
16. The heavy toll of substance use
17. The health effects of war
18. Out in the cold
19. Priced out of health
20. When disaster strikes
21. Climate change and our health
22. Reproductive health, reproductive justice
23. Coming to terms with firearms
24. The corrosive role of racism
Section 3. On inequities and the health of marginalized populations
25. On health haves and health have nots
26. Income and health
27. What Flint teaches us
28. Gender equity, almost
29. The well-being of LGBT populations
30. Transgender today
31. The health of immigrants
32. Caring for refugees
Section 4. The challenges faced by public health
33. Population health science-are we doing it wrong?
34. To screen, or not to screen
35. Knowledge and values
36. A step backwards on vaccines
37. Living with complexity
38. Moving beyond 39. On ignorance
40. Acknowledging luck
Section 5. Towards a healthier world 
41. Aging healthy
42. In the heart of the city, health
43. Towards an activist public health
44. Promoting prevention
45. Innovating for a healthier public
46. Who should we talk to, and how?
47. On engaging the media
48. Making the acceptable unacceptable
49. Social movements and the conditions of health
50. Public health as public good
51. A world without public health
Index

Author Information

Sandro Galea, Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean, School of Public Health, Boston University

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, is the Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the School of Public Health at Boston University. A physician and epidemiologist interested in the social production of health of urban populations, his work explores innovative cells-to-society approaches to population health questions with an overall aim of advancing a consequentialist approach to population health scholarship. He is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is the author or editor of Epidemiology Matters, Population Health Science, and Systems Science and Population Health, all from Oxford University Press.