🚨I wrote about public health’s history; why it spent the 20thC moving away from broad coalitions, political advocacy, and a crusading spirit that actively pushed for social reforms; and why it must regain those things to be relevant and effective. 1/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Public health is often cast as an underdog, invisible & ignored. That’s not the full story. In the 20thC, it made choices that silenced its voice, reduced its constituency, minimized its power. It “actively participated in its own marginalization.” 2/ theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Germ theory was a revolution that gave public health license to be less revolutionary. It allowed the field to move away from the social problems that underlie poor health towards a blinkered, individualistic, biomedical model—to its detriment, and ours. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
This is not a critique of today's local public health folks, who’ve been asked for the world at great cost.
This is a look at how we got to here, the legacy of historical choices that trap modern public health in fragility, and what needs to change. 4/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
This is a look at how we got to here, the legacy of historical choices that trap modern public health in fragility, and what needs to change. 4/
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
So much of the discourse around pandemics focuses, essentially, on whether we have sufficient stuff.
This piece is part of an ongoing series about whether we’re even thinking about this entire category of problem in the right way. /5
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
This piece is part of an ongoing series about whether we’re even thinking about this entire category of problem in the right way. /5
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
A headline/subheading combo that we almost used for this piece was:
A Century-Old Idea That Could Revitalize Public Health
(It’s… er… public health.)
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
A Century-Old Idea That Could Revitalize Public Health
(It’s… er… public health.)
theatlantic.com/health/archive…
I did a bunch of reading for this piece on public health’s history in the US, but this paper was probably the best of them. It’s free, sweeping, and powerfully written. Recommended if you want to learn more about the themes in my piece ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Writing this piece made me think that public health and journalism are actually very similar--fields whose foundational missions should push them to oppose power, and whose structural problems can make them subservient to it. theatlantic.com/health/archive…
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