Marking Two Years Since the Murder of George Floyd | SPH Today

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It has been two years since we were reminded, brutally, of the persistence of racism in our society, and of the threat it poses to the health of Black communities—to the health of our nation. In a tragic confluence of events, this anniversary falls just weeks after a racially motivated shooting in Buffalo, NY, in which racism once again led to violence and the murder of Black Americans. In this context, the anniversary of Floyd’s murder takes on increased urgency as a call to reengage with the challenge of ending racism, to build a healthier world.

George Floyd’s murder was fundamentally a tragedy—for Floyd, for his family and community, for the country and the world. It sparked a national reckoning with racism and police brutality. It shaped how we talk about these issues and the moral urgency we bring to this conversation. This conversation remains vital, ongoing, a living testament to a life horrifically cut short.

For many, this conversation was new, unfamiliar, perhaps uncomfortable. For those of us in public health it was an overdue profile-raising of truths we have long known, that should always have been central to our thinking. We have long known that racism undermines the health of those who face it, that racism keeps us all from being fully healthy as a society. This was particularly clear during COVID-19, a global tragedy with which Floyd’s death intersected. As the pandemic unfolded, Black Americans were three times as likely to sicken and twice as likely to die from the disease than white Americans. This vulnerability to disease long predated the pandemic and has been reflected by a range of Black-white health gaps, in which communities of color have long borne poorer health. The roots of these health gaps run deep, stemming from a history of racism that is inextricable from our country’s legacy of slavery. George Floyd’s murder, and the Black-white health gaps made unignorable by COVID-19, were a stark reminder, if we needed one, that we cannot address poor health in the present without addressing this history.

In the years since George Floyd’s murder, our school has worked to build on our longstanding engagement with the link between racism and health. We have welcomed lawmakers to our community to discuss antiracism as health policy, our scholars have engaged with the BU Center for Antiracist Research to continue this conversation, and our students, faculty, staff, and alumni work each day to shape a world free of racism and the poor health it creates. This focus is consistent with our community’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, a commitment which shapes all we do, on a long journey to do better by our community, inhabiting our responsibility to create an anti-racist world.

The trauma of George Floyd’s murder remains raw, reflecting a broken status quo we have not yet fully addressed. We cannot bring George Floyd back, but we can work to ensure that his memory will forever be linked to a better future to which we should all aspire. Thank you to all who are engaging in this work, today and every day.

Warm regards,

Sandro

Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH
Dean, Robert A Knox Professor

On centering reproductive health and access in the public health agenda | The Healthiest Goldfish

A few days ago, Politico obtained a draft majority opinion written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. If the draft becomes the Court’s final opinion, it will end the constitutional protection of abortion access, first established by the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade. If that happens, decisions about abortion access will fall to the states. Even recognizing that this leak is not yet the settled opinion of the Court, the news is heartbreaking. This leak suggests there could soon be a seismic shift around this issue, as federally protected abortion access—a fact of life in this country for nearly 50 years—reverts to a status quo not seen since before many Americans were born. The implications of this decision are enormous. 19 states will effectively ban abortion, immediately affecting access for more than 40 million women, and abortion rights will no longer be protected in a majority of states.

Read the full article here

Moving the Principles of Population Health Science to the Heart of Public Health Practice | Longwood

ABSTRACT

As noted by Frank et al. (2022), three recent epidemics – COVID-19, obesity and the health-related consequences of climate change – illustrate how public health has fallen short in applying its core underlying principles. Building on this work, I ask two questions: Why is it that the principles that can productively move public health forward have not influenced practice sufficiently to lead to a different response to emerging pandemics? What might we do to turn a corner and make these principles a foundational element of all that public health does? I offer a few thoughts on both these questions.

Our responsibility in a time of war | The Healthiest Goldfish

On Thursday February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Although there had been a steady drumbeat of warnings that this invasion was imminent, the war that followed was still a jarring reminder of the evils of war, of an event that felt out of place and time, a twentieth-century war unfold in a twenty-first century context. For a time, it was possible to think such a conflict could not emerge in our highly interconnected and interdependent world. It was particularly striking to see such a war in Europe, where our present interconnectedness emerged, in part, from the ashes of two world wars—conflicts which taught us, we thought, to never again fight in such a way.

Seeing our failure to learn the lessons of history has been, I must admit, a cause for some despair, as I have asked myself: what can we do, as individuals, at moments like this? How much power does the American or Russian citizen have to stop a war when the forces of illiberalism seem bent on waging one? It is incredible to think that all this destruction has been wrought by the choices of such a small number of people—really, by the choices of one man, motivated by abstract notions of imperial glory and resentment for how the world changed over 30 years ago.

Read more at The Healthiest Goldfish.

Public health within reason | The Healthiest Goldfish

A bit of an opening announcement: This is going to be the last regular weekly Healthiest Goldfish.

When I started The Healthiest Goldfish, my aim was to write a series of reflections about the forces that shape health. These reflections were to be informed by our experience of COVID-19, although hopefully not unduly constrained or defined by the urgencies of the moment, pressing as they were. Indeed, one of the joys of writing is seeing thoughts and ideas evolve and not always knowing the ways in which they will do so. Much of my writing in this space did indeed concern the lessons of COVID-19 and how they point us towards engaging with the foundational drivers of health. From the role of money and resources in shaping health to the dangers of moralism in public health, to the ineluctable importance of complexity, the themes of this newsletter intersected with much that I have written on throughout my career and which have risen to the fore during the crisis of the last two years. It is also true that interwoven with these themes have been a number of detours, touching on subjects as diverse as social media, UFOs, and the importance of good faith argument.

Read more at The Healthiest Goldfish.