Whose health is it, anyway?

ABSTRACT

The health of nations has never been a more pressing concern for governments and societies around the world as it is today. Even before the pandemic began, our ageing and growing populations, living with more co-morbidities, presented significant challenges to health systems and economies globally. This book is therefore both timely and relevant to the single most important issue of today and tomorrow-our collective health. It provides unique analysis of the challenges facing the public's health today, furnished with examples, illustrations and innovative proposals for moving forward and transforming our health. Fresh insights into why our health matters to each of us both individually and collectively as society, are put forward-although we are living longer, more of these years are spent in poor health and this will continue to impact more people in years to come. In characteristic style, the chapters harness a vision for positive change by going much further than just diagnosing the problem;they dissect the drivers (making the point that our health is not inevitable, these are not 'determinants') of the wider health environment through novel approaches. This encompasses well described social drivers of health, to more novel commercial drivers of health, capturing both how they drive the world and the environment that we live in. They also draw on the positive commercial drivers of old as demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The book focuses on the healthcare system. Their vision of transforming healthcare systems from 'importers of illness to exporters of health' is supported by the compelling case of the potential reward in achieving this goal, and the imperative to do so, alongside pragmatic, yet innovative, approaches that embrace emerging technologies and data analytics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)