Why a focus on enduring principles should underlie all efforts in health
We are in a time when much is being overturned. Policies are being rolled back, funding is being cut, long-standing institutions overhauled. Globally, it seems like the U.S. is retreating from its role as leader of the postwar international order, which for 70 years was the bedrock of a lasting, if imperfect, peace.
In health, this time of change has been acutely, painfully felt. Everyone knows someone who has lost a job or faced sudden uncertainty around the future of their work. We witness institutions that appeared broadly seaworthy — and that we assumed enjoyed public support for doing good, necessary work — enter choppy waters, with close to half the country either indifferent to their fate or actively hoping they will sink.
Beliefs that constituted a kind of collective faith — vaccines are safe and effective, the work of science can be trusted, technological progress is a net positive for society — have, for reasons understandable and less so, lost their hold on our consciousness. They were once the default opinion of many, if not most of us. No more.
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