Let ’ s Do Public Health Better

BY KIM BELLARD Eric Reinhart, who describes himself as “a political anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and physician,” has had a busy month. He started with an essay in NEJM about “reconstructive justice,” then an op-ed in The New York Times on how our health care system is demoralizing the physicians who work in it, and then the two that caught my attention: companion pieces in The Nation and Stat News about reforming our public health “system” from a physician-driven one to a true community health one.  He’s preaching to my choir. I wrote almost five years ago: “We need to stop viewing public health as a boring, not glamorous, small part of our healthcare system, but, rather, as the bedrock of it, and of our health.”  Dr. Reinhart pulls no punches about our public health system(s), or the people who lead them: …the rot in public health is structural: It cannot be cured by simply rotating the figureheads who preside over it. Building effective national health infrastructure will require confronting pervasive distortions of public health and remaking the leadership appointment systems that have left US public health agencies captive to partisan interests. He notes the “gradual medicalization” of public health; every director of the CDC since 1953 has been a physician, despite the oft-cited fact that medical care only accounts for perhaps 10-20% of the factors that affect our health. “Clinical reasoning, ‘ he says, “is not o...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Policy Dr. Reinhart gun violence Kim Bellard Opioid Addiction public health Source Type: blogs