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Why We Need to Invest in Public Health Capital

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  Michael Grossman's influential health capital model conceptualizes health as a form of capital that individuals build through their choices (Grossman 1972) . Like financial capital, health capital accumulates through investment and depreciates over time. Maintaining health requires people to sacrifice time and money to choose activities that build healthy bodies. Published in the early 1970s, this influential theory has been cited over 11,000 times. The model emphasizes the way our bodies and minds retain the scars of past choices for decades. It predicts addiction cycles and explains why education is a critical determinant of the desire to be healthy. According to Grossman's model, individuals act as though they can observe their body's lifetime accumulated health capital stock. They choose behaviors and commodities that either enlarge this stock or allow it to depreciate. Each person’s choices are the fundamental explanation of how healthy they are. A Neoliberal Bl...
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How to Save Lives Without Being Hated

How to Save Lives Without Being Hated "Protecting Health, Saving Lives Millions at a Time” This powerful motto encapsulates the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School’ s commitment to large-scale, impactful public health initiatives that have truly lived up to the hype. The current White House attempt to terminate $billions in domestic and global public health funding is a hurtful jolt to a workforce that has sacrificed so much to make healthy places everywhere. Being misunderstood, ignored, and neglected is the eternal plight of public health.  Hopkins’ well-intended motto was designed to express core values and appeal broadly. It offers an accurate description of 20th century public health—an era of big successful campaigns against childhood infections, tobacco, and HIV. But, in a polarized world the message lands with a thud of perceived condescension. Public health leaders attract visceral scorn; just ask Dr. Fauci.  But maybe it’s time to reflect on how it got this bad and think ...
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