"Public health expert Leana Wen gives an insider's account of public health and its crucial role-from opioid addiction to global pandemic-and tells an inspiring story of her journey from homeless immigrant to being named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People"--

"An elephant has being playing with his toys and putting all of them away in the wrong place. Soon his mother notices that something is not quite right with her little one's trunk"--

"Popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to establish affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality"--

How We Do Harm exposes the underbelly of health care today--the overtreatment of the rich, the undertreatment of the poor; the financial conflicts of interest that determine the care that physicians provide; the insurance companies that don't demand the best (or even the least expensive) care; and the pharmaceutical companies concerned with selling drugs, regardless of whether they improve health or do harm. Dr. Otis Brawley is the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society and an oncologist with a dazzling clinical, research, and policy career. How We Do Harm pulls back the curtain on how medicine is really practiced in America. Brawley tells of doctors who select treatment based on payment they will receive, rather than on demonstrated scientific results; hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that seek out patients to treat even if they are not actually ill (but as long as their insurance will pay); a public primed to swallow the latest pill, no matter the cost; and rising healthcare costs for unnecessary--and often unproven--treatments that we all pay for. Brawley calls for rational health care, health care drawn from results-based, scientifically justifiable treatments, and not just the peddling of hot new drugs. Brawley's personal history--from a childhood in the gang-ridden streets of black Detroit to the green hallways of Grady Memorial Hospital, the largest public hospital in the UNited States, to the boardrooms of the American Cancer Society--results in a passionate view of medicine and the politics of illness in America and a deep understanding of heath care today.

"Thomas Fisher was raised on the South Side of Chicago and even as a kid understood how close death could feel-he came from a family of pioneering doctors who believed in staying in the community, but on those streets he saw just how vulnerable Black bodies could be. Determined to follow his family's legacy, Fisher studied public health at Dartmouth and Harvard, then returned to the University of Chicago Medical School. As soon as he graduated, he began working in the ER that served his South Side community. Even as his career took him to stints at the White House, working on what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act and helping develop HMOs for underserved communities, he never gave up his ER rotations. He knew that to really understand healthcare disparities and medical needs, you had to stay close. The emergency room is designed for the most urgent cases, but it is often the first resort for South Side residents without any other choice. Fisher deals with those patients with necessary dispatch, but what he really wants to do is to spend his time helping them understand how it is they ended up in the ER-talk to them about the role economics plays in their health; the history of healthcare for the poor and marginalized; why Black people in particular distrust the medical profession; why they don't have a personal physician; the effect of food deserts and education gaps on their health; and, most of all, why they live in a society that has deemed their bodies and lives as less important than others. In this book he gets to have those lost conversations. This is the story of a dramatic year in the life of the Chicago ER-a year of an unprecedented pandemic and a ferocious epidemic of homicides-interwoven with the primer in healthcare one doctor wishes he could give his patients. Full of day-to-day drama, heartbreaking stories, compelling personal narrative, and penetrating analysis of our most fundamental failure as a society, this is a page-turning and mind-opening work that will offer readers a fresh vision of healthcare as a foundation of social justice"--

Learn about what happens in the hospital.

In a Baltimore inner-city neighborhood, a man's life expectancy is 63; in another neighborhood not far away, it's 83. The same 20-year avoidable disparity exists in nearby neighborhoods of cities around the world. In Sierra Leone, one in 21 fifteen-year-old women will die in her fertile years of a maternal-related cause; in Italy, the figure is one in 17,100; but in the United States, which spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, it is one in 1,800. Why? Dramatic differences in health are not a simple matter of rich and poor; poverty alone doesn't drive ill health--inequality does. Suicide, heart disease, lung disease, obesity, and diabetes are all linked to social disadvantage. In every country, people at relative social disadvantage suffer health disadvantage and shorter lives. Within countries, the higher the social status of individuals, the better their health. Conventional approaches to improving health have emphasized access to technical solutions and changes in the behavior of individuals, but these methods only go so far. What really makes a difference is creating the conditions for people to have control over their lives. Author Marmot emphasizes that the rate of illness of a society as a whole determines how well it functions: the greater the health inequity, the greater the dysfunction. We have the tools and resources to improve levels of health for individuals and societies around the world, and not to do so would be a form of injustice. The Health Gap presents compelling evidence for a radical change in the way we think about health and indeed society, and inspires us to address the societal imbalances in power, money, and resources that work against health equity.--Adapted from book jacket.