Healthier

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

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.

- 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 "lifestyle"
- 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