Book Recommendation: Well: What We Need To Talk About When We Talk About Health
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Dr. Tiffany Vora recommends the book Well by Dr. Sandro Galea
The Future of Health and Medicine is a fascinating topic that I love to explore with people around the world. But if we focus on medicine and technology, are we missing a bigger picture that is critical to achieving true health?
Yes, argues Dr. Sandro Galea in his 2019 nonfiction book Well: What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Health. Here, he focuses on the environmental, economic, social, and political contexts that underlie an individual’s ability to enjoy good health.
Over 20 chapters, the author turns to the USA for case studies of the elements of health, not just for individuals but for whole societies: money, power, place, compassion, knowledge, luck, and more. Galea points out that the USA’s tendency to focus on individual choices leads to punishment of people for being born poor, or part of an ethnic group that has been marginalized or even brutally abused. Obese? It’s because you’re too lazy to exercise - not because you live in a violent neighborhood, suffer from asthma due to air pollution, or can only access calorie-dense, nutrient-poor processed foods.
Galea argues that that kind of thinking leads to policies and markets that make good health accessible to a lucky few at the expense of the many. And the world simply does not need to be that way.
💡 Further, he shows that health could be included in many broader conversations about the type of future that we would like to build … but we need to disentangle “health” from “healthcare.” As he writes, “Healthcare can secure the temporary absence of disease, which is not the same as health.”
Healthcare is what you turn to when you’re already sick. How can we make the pursuit of everyday healthy living an explicit goal in many areas?
He writes, “With health as a goal, we can fight climate change, we can create a fairer economy, we can promote social justice, and we can build safer, more walkable cities and invest more broadly in public goods. And when we see how poor health is linked to the broader conditions that shape our world, we can, by addressing those conditions, create a world that is fundamentally oriented toward promoting health.”
With its declared focus on the USA, this book (understandably) passes by opportunities for global perspectives. And several areas of emphasis may be problematic for some readers in this era of combative political hyperpolarization.
Nonetheless, Well is a worthy read. It highlights innovation spaces beyond the scientific and technological that are rich opportunities for experimentation. And it reminds us that what we tend to think of as “health” is only a small piece of a broader and complex landscape. Dr. Galea invites us to approach that landscape with compassion, humility, hope, and determination to build a better future.
Dr. Tiffany Vora speaks, writes, and advises on how to harness technology to build the best possible future(s). She is an expert in biotech, health, & innovation. For a full list of topics and ways to collaborate, visit her Work Together webpage.
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