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With compassion, authority, and empathy,
The Contagion Next Time offers a roadmap for those who witnessed the terrible convergence of two pivotal forces in 2020--the COVID-19 pandemic and the fight for racial justice in America--and wondered how we could ensure we never end up here again. Leading voice for health Sandro Galea shows us how we can strengthen the foundational forces that shape our nation before the next crisis becomes an all-consuming conflagration.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Section 1. The world we live in
- 1. A better and healthier time to be alive than ever
- 2. An unhealthy country
- 3. An unhealthy world
- Section 2. The conditions that create health
- 4. Who we are, the foundational forces
- 5. Where we live, work, and play
- 6. Politics, power, and money
- Section 3. The values that should inform these conditions
- 7. Compassion
- 8. Social, racial, and economic justice
- 9. Health as a public good
- Section 4. A science for a better health
- 10. Understanding what matters most
- 11. Working in complexity and doubt
- 12. Humility and informing the public conversation
- Epilogue
- References
About the author
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.
Summary
How can we create a healthier world and prevent the crisis next time?
In a few short months, COVID-19 devastated the world and, in particular, the United States. It infected millions, killed hundreds of thousands, and effectively made the earth stand still.
Yet America was already in poor health before COVID-19 appeared. Racism, marginalization, socioeconomic inequality--our failure to address these forces left us vulnerable to COVID-19 and the ensuing global health crisis it became. Had we tackled these challenges twenty years ago, after the outbreak of SARS, perhaps COVID-19 could have been quickly contained. Instead, we allowed our systems to deteriorate.
Following on the themes of his award-winning publication Well, Sandro Galea's The Contagion Next Time articulates the foundational forces shaping health in our society and how we can strengthen them to prevent the next outbreak from becoming a pandemic. Because while no one could have predicted that a pandemic would strike when it did, we did know that a pandemic would strike, sooner or later. We're still not ready for the next pandemic. But we can be--we must be.
In lyrical prose, The Contagion Next Time challenges all of us to tackle the deep-rooted obstacles preventing us from becoming a truly vibrant and equitable nation, reminding us of what we've seemed to have forgotten: that our health is a public good worth protecting.
Additional text
The Contagion Next Time brings into clear focus why we have never been able to realize an equitable response during pandemics and what change agents can do to create more healthy, equitable, and empowered communities. Dr. Galea's illuminating and pathbreaking work will shape the global conversation around the forces that shape health for generations to come.
