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Now available in Chinese.
Reviews
“Galea’s book is like a meditation on what can make for a healthier world. He is uniquely gifted to give us this broader prescription for our lives and those of our children and grandchildren. His is a message of hope, and we should listen.”
Read the full review above in The Lancet Psychiatry.
“For 45 years I have fought for equity, compassion, and inclusion in mental health, so I am thrilled to see Sandro Galea’s Well take the revolutionary and compelling stance that these principles can have a more beneficial effect upon public health than any scientific discovery.”
“A sensitive and nuanced perspective on often overlooked issues—compassion, fairness, freedom—that matter most to our health.”
“Galea moves beyond a numbing rhetoric of numbers to tell how societal forces mold people’s health. ”
“A timely reminder that when it comes to public health challenges like gun violence, civic engagement is the closest thing we have to a miracle drug.”
Awarded 2019 Book of the Year Award in Consumer Health by the American Journal of Nursing.
“A brilliant exposé of the societal factors that profoundly impact individual and population health.
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“Galea elevates our understanding of what forces influence our health and shape our well-being, writing with sensitivity, nuance and authority.”
“The passionate argument we need for the health we deserve. What an important frame for the right to health!”
“Sandro Galea gives a revolutionary perspective on the state of public health in the United States and tells us how it can be fixed.”
Read the full review at The Washington BookReview
“Galea wants to replace short-term acts of empathy with compassion that acts on the root causes of suffering — which “envisions and aspires to a better world.””
Read the full review at NPR.org
Well in the World
The Soundtrack of Well
“Conversations around healthcare mean more if we live in a society that actively values health—not just medicine. Sandro Galea’s case for change in America is bold, disarming, and eminently achievable. Well is the starting point for a conversation we need to have.”
“A clear and compelling case that health inequities resulting from environmental, societal, and political forces are holding all of us back. It’s time to reinvest in our health—not just our healthcare.”
“This book will change the way you think about health—not just yours, but the world’s.”
“A radical new perspective on the true drivers of health—and a set of truly disruptive conclusions to inspire those designing health systems. A defining manifesto for the years ahead.”
“An elegant, jarring examination of the public’s health in America—which for all of its flaws remains the source of our greatest hope for the future.”
Kirkus Review
An epidemiologist reframes the American health care crisis.
Born in Malta and raised in Canada, Galea (Dean, Boston Univ. School of Public Health; Healthier: Fifty Thoughts on the Foundations of Population Health, 2017, etc.) has traveled the world treating patients in remote areas, experiences that shaped his impressions of what truly influences health and health care, two aspects of medicine that are often conflated. He underscores global statistical trends revealing that despite leading investments in health prevention, Americans still fall short on worldwide illness ratios. Galea faults a society that “is simply not oriented to keep[ing] us healthy” and seeks to gain a better understanding of how to achieve ultimate vitality and longevity. He offers a reassessment of the many elements of sustainable health and wellness, examining a wide variety of external, interconnected forces. While acknowledging that some influences—e.g., intergenerational factors and certain environmental conditions—are unavoidable, he intensively addresses the building blocks of sustainable health while putting allegories and pop-culture references to effective use. These key pieces include creating solid financial foundations, including the use of redistributive economic programs; resisting corruption in high-level political and corporate arenas; encouraging the establishment of tightknit community networks; cultivating emotional well-being; advocating for knowledgeable personal choices that resist negative influences from social media networks, advertising, and “social contagion.” Galea believes that all of these forces collectively affect the healthfulness of Americans and that each plays a role in fostering an important brand of preventative medicine that can be cultivated at home. He implores readers to take the steps to change their minds and bodies now rather than relying on medicine or chronically seeing doctors after we are already ill. While some areas of the author’s research may seem like wishful thinking in today’s world of greed, violence, and class inequities, his hopes for a healthier populace make for a compassionate, relevant book.
Sharp, optimistic, and factually supported encouragement to boost societal attitudes about the power of salubrity.
Nature Review
US citizens top world spending on health, yet have shorter ‘healthspans’ than people in other rich countries. Why? Cogently and often movingly, epidemiologist Sandro Galea argues that an obsession with drugs, doctors and insurance obscures the fact that the roots of sickness and health are life circumstances: money, status, education, environment and a range of other socio-economic issues. With the richest 1% living for up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%, investment in public goods such as education, universal health coverage and environmental regulation is ever more urgent.
American Journal of Epidemiology
“…because of the potential impact that Well has on the way we think about health, this book should be required reading for anyone in a health-related field, including health policy. Readers of Well will eagerly await, and hopefully add to, the future conversations and books that it will inevitably inspire.” -L. Ashley Robinson
Columbia Magazine Review
There is perhaps no more urgent topic in America today than health care. But according to physician Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University’s school of public health, the American approach to public health is fundamentally skewed. Galea argues that our health-care system is almost entirely focused on treating illness rather than preventing it, which means that America spends more on health care than other countries, while getting worse results. It’s an impeccably researched, well-reasoned look at a complex topic.
Boston Review
“Sandro Galea’s Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health asks why we still avoid talking about health in population terms, instead focusing myopically on the provision of clinical health services for individuals. His cure is to change the conversation by persuasion and research, and he offers suggestions for employing political and social power in different ways.”
AJPH Review
“In Well, Galea catalogs and describes many of the usual suspects (e.g., economics, education) but also makes a solid case for some less discussed forces, such as love, hate, and compassion.” -Justin B. Moore