Healthier: Fifty Thoughts on the Foundations of Population Health [Paperback]

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.

Healthieris 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.

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 l"