The prolific and award-winning public health scholar presented his ideas at an Open VISIONS Forum sponsored by Fairfield Egan.
Physician, epidemiologist, and author Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH, one of the most cited social scientists in the world, spoke to an audience of more than 500 students, alumni, and faculty at an Open VISIONS Forum at the . The lecture, sponsored by the Marion Peckham Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies, was also attended via simulcast by students and faculty at the Austin, Texas campus and by online graduate students in public health and healthcare administration.
Dr. Galea is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. He is a nationally recognized expert on the health consequences of mass trauma and has published more than 1,000 journal articles and 24 books. In his lecture, entitled “Our Shared Health: Aspiring Toward Better Health for All in the Coming Decades,” Dr. Galea discussed our collective responsibility as a society to create the conditions for people to be healthy.
Distinguishing between health and healthcare, Dr. Galea explained that healthcare makes up only a small fraction of health. He said the world we create around us makes up the greater part. “Our opportunity for livable wages, our opportunity to exercise, our opportunity for safe housing, living in a country without structural racism and discrimination — those are all the forces that generate our health,” he said.
