Well, Sandro Galea
Well, Sandro Galea
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Well
What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health

Author: Sandro Galea

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Unabridged: 6 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/18/2019


Synopsis

In Well, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health.

Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up.

The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine—the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale.

Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character—and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics.

About Sandro Galea

Sandro Galea is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. He has been named an "epidemiology innovator" by Time and one of the "World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" by Thomson Reuters. A native of Malta, he has served as a field physician for Doctors Without Borders and held academic positions at Columbia University, University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. At the time of his current appointment, he was the youngest dean of a school of public health in the United States.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Andy

Public health is difficult to teach in America because the paradigm throughout the culture for understanding health is based on the biomedical model of disease. As a result, basic public health concepts such as "prevention" or "social determinants" are misunderstood by many people. For example, if t......more

Goodreads review by Jan

Sandro Galea's Well~~ What do we talk about when we Americans talk about healthcare? Treatment for our illnesses, that's what. Dr. Sandro Galea argues in his 2020 book Well: What We Have to Talk About When We Talk About Health that we don't talk about keeping healthy or preventing illness. I complete......more

Goodreads review by Josh

Important and impactful, but slightly redundant and pedantic. A quick read. Not sure I took any action items away, but it reinforces my views on the need for investment in health, not just healthcare.......more