If we care about maximizing health for all, and ensuring health equity, we have to overcome some major issues in how we confront problems as a society.
"Public health" is a big part of that toolkit, but it is inadequately understood and appreciated outside of the field. 1/
Glaringly, it's #PublicHealthWeek.
... in a time when many don't know what "public health" really means
... even as we find ourselves in the midst of a pandemic. 2/
Explore "what is public health" searches online yourself, but to me, public health is a field with the goal of and tools for understanding and preventing suffering and death *at the macro level.* 3/
A lot of the focus is on identifying optimal, possible moments for prevention.
And I think the important lesson to me during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that not all moments to prevent massive health threats are the same. 4/
Some moments are clear cut and immediate emergencies, like a hurricane or an asteroid on a collision course.
But many lack core features of these threats: observability, immediacy, definitiveness, and relevance to those in power. 5/
Some are massive but less clear: possible-pandemics, climate crisis.
Others are ongoing, everyday, quiet but massive: food/water/air safety, gun violence, transit crashes, physical inactivity, social isolation, substances like tobacco. 6/
To me there are 2 big meta-issues for public health:
First, we under-communicate the averted disasters and the systems used to avert them. 7/
If we blow up a collision course asteroid, its destruction is visible but also its collision is imaginable and rememberable even after its destruction. 8/
Saving lives from dirty air or with a pandemic prevention system doesn't build in the "noticing" of lives saved or appreciation for the systems used to save the live.
These features aren't baked in. We need to communicate these better. 9/
Second, all public health is political, and the field has, overall, been ignorant or naive about this.
Communication, science, reports, and lobbying are inadequate. We must build power and wield power.
There are too many vested interests resisting our agenda. 10/
Thankfully, on that note, there are great efforts emerging. 11/
E.g.
@PHAwakened is a politically active (though non-partisan) community of public health professionals.
The field is increasingly conscious of the #PoliticalDeterminantsOfHealth.
Public health workers are getting involved in direct action, mutual aid, and elections. 12/
Ok to wrap up, humanity needs the public health approach to tackle inequities/inadequacies of approaching illness late and only at the individual-level.
And, public health needs to politicize, shift narratives, and *show itself.*
#NPHW #WeArePublicHealth 13/
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