Pained Uncomfortable Conversations about the Public's Health

"As a country, the United States overinvests in medical care, often at the expense of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produce health. Indeed, the rise of medicine as a cornerstone of American life and culture has coincided with a social and political devaluation of factors demonstrated to mean more to one's vitality than anything else-influences like where one lives, works, and plays; livable wages that create opportunity for healthy living; and gender and racial equity. As such, this book pushes the conversation around American health toward matters of class, money, and culture. It highlights how the structural components of everyday life ultimately determine who gets to be healthy in today's America. In doing so, it makes a case for reframing the political discourse on public health in less myopic, more effectual terms"--