Sandro Galea sat down with Tom Frieden to explore the forces shaping health in a turbulent moment. Galea — founding dean of the new School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, physician, epidemiologist, and editor-in-chief of JAMA Health Forum — discussed everything from the worsening Ebola outbreak in the DRC to rebuilding public trust after COVID-19. He reflected on the limits of applying population-level public health thinking to individual health, and closed on a note of grounded optimism: history shows that health improves decade after decade — but progress requires strategy, coalition-building, and persistence.
Public Health Progress and Pragmatism