We all die and, despite some fanciful aspirations to the contrary, we will all keep dying into the future. Our daily routines keep us closed off to this fact. Death’s inevitability suggests that we should keep it in our sights as we think about the public’s health. There are three areas which might fruitfully draw our attention.
Once we accept that we are going to die, how we spend our money and our time on the business of health begins to shift. At core we should aspire to die healthy. That means focusing our energy on creating a world that maximizes health, not one where we invest our resources into the last few months of life, aiming to fight death at all cost. This would represent a radical shift in how we think about our limited health investment dollars. Perhaps death can help focus our mind on living better, on the conditions that we need to create to generate health, rather than asking serial medical specialists to tackle symptom after symptom until we die.
The 2018 Midterms: A Public Health Takeaway | Dean's Note
In my last Dean’s Note, I argued that health was on the ballot in the 2018 midterm elections. Last night, health won. From climate change, to gun control, to health care, the issues that shape health were at the heart of campaigns across the country. Soaring voter turnout showed the power of these issues to mobilize millions of people in pursuit of a healthier world. Even more encouraging is how many candidates won on platforms that are good for health—from commonsense gun safety reform, to universal health care, to a willingness to address climate change. Arkansas approved a ballot measure raising the minimum wage by 29 percent over three years, a move which will help about 300,000 workers in the state access the resources they need to be healthy. Washington state approved a ballot measure to raise the legal age for buying assault rifles. Florida approved a ballot measure restoring the right to vote to more than 1 million former felons, allowing them to participate in the political process that shapes their health and the health of all. These are just a few of the changes ushered in by the election, changes with positive implications for health.
Health Is on the Ballot This Week | Dean's Note
This Tuesday, the US will hold its midterm elections, when voters will choose their representatives in a range of local and national offices. These offices include governorships, seats in the US House of Representatives and Senate, as well as in state legislatures. Some context, for those who may be unfamiliar with how these elections work: During the midterms, one-third of the US Senate and the entirety of the US House of Representatives are up for election. The elections are called “midterms” because they occur near the middle of a president’s four-year term in office. Compared to presidential elections, voter turnout in midterms has typically been low, but there are signs of higher turnout than usual this year, perhaps reflective of the increased political engagement we have seen in the US since the last presidential election.
Vote Health! | Fortune
As we approach the midterm elections, it is clear that health is a core priority for American voters. A Gallup poll taken earlier this year found that “the availability and affordability of health care” topped the list of Americans’ concerns. This concern seems to have been sharpened by Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a move which would result in the loss of coverage for millions of Americans.
It is also reflected by the growing enthusiasm for adopting a system of single payer health care. Such a system was once prohibitively controversial in the US, but, paradoxically perhaps due to the uncertainty of the ACA’s fate, Americans now seem increasingly open to a system of truly universal health care. Over half of Americans now support such a system, and many Democratic Congressional candidates have endorsed it. The upcoming election will help determine whether we chart a course towards single payer, with significant ramifications for our country’s health.
The Public's Health: As Midterm Elections Approach, Three Steps to Creating a Healthier World | Public Health Post
We have argued often in this column that health is the product of the social, economic, and political forces around us, frequently invisible unless we pay close attention to how they influence health. The challenge of addressing these forces is one of abstraction. We realize that it is more tangible to say “we need to build more hospitals to make our health better” than to say “we need to ensure that the political environment creates more health.” And yet, the latter is critical and as we head to the midterms we offer a simple three-part prescription for how we can improve health that is so inextricably linked to the world around us.
There Is No Public Health without Environmental Health | Dean's Note
This week, we will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the doctoral program in environmental health at SPH. Many of our alumni will be joining us on November 1-2 to tell us about the work they are doing and to connect with current students, staff, and faculty. This milestone naturally leads to thoughts about where the field of environmental health has been, where it is going, and its role in public health.
In a 2016 Dean’s Note on the aspirations and strategies of public health, George Annas and I wrote, “Public health continues to be about the conditions that make people healthy.” These conditions are largely social, economic, political, and environmental. Since then, I have written often on the many ways the health of our environment shapes the health of populations—through examples like climate change and natural disasters, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. These examples speak to the fundamental immediacy of environmental health, how the conditions of the natural and human-made world around us shape our health each day in often profound ways. When our environment is safe, clean, and sustainable, health is able to thrive. When it is not, health cannot help but suffer.
The Public's Health: Can We Promote Public Health and Generate Return on Our Investment? | Public Health Post
It is widely recognized that the United States spends far more on health, or perhaps more accurately, on medical care than any other country on earth. This leads to a considerable amount of hand-wringing, and also some well-considered ideas about how we can spend our medicine dollars better. While most thinking about how we may best spend our health dollars features, at heart, some scenario of greater spending on prevention, our health spending remains resolutely curative. Of the $3.3 trillion spent on health in 2016, only about 2% of that was spent on classic public health activities such as disease monitoring and surveillance.
We might suggest that this is misaligned with what we really want for our own and our children’s lives. To put it more prosaically, wouldn’t we rather never develop Alzheimer’s than receive treatment for our Alzheimer’s once we get it? Few people ever express a preference for cure over prevention.
Professional graduate degrees are not inferior | Times Higher Education
Professional graduate degrees in the US have long been seen as the poor cousins of their academic counterparts.
There is a persistent perception that degrees focusing on specific careers are formulaic, their content dictated by accrediting bodies and lacking in innovative thought or pedagogy. Higher education literature suggests that they do not contribute to intellectual development and have to balance a tension between intellectual development and preparing students for jobs. And academics view them as mere money-makers for their institutions, far removed from the pride of place occupied by academic degrees, which prepare students for a life of research and scholarship.