The Upstream Doctors: Medical Innovators Track Sickness to Its Source (Kindle Single) (TED Books)

As a culture, we often ignore the fundamental causes of health and illness, and focus instead on how to fund drugs and surgery. Our health-care system really pays more attention to disease than to health. Of the $2.1 trillion spent in 2008 on medical care, ninety-five cents of every dollar was used to treat disease, not prevent it.4 • It is far eas

The health of the human body is ultimately dependent on the health of habitat and community. And yet, this connection is almost universally ignored in modern health disciplines where biomedical reductionism rules the day. Human health and environmental preservation are treated as entirely different fields, with miles of empty space between them.

to balance “upstream” work to keep people healthy through adequate services in the social sphere, with “downstream” work of medical care for people after they have become ill.

Inadequate attention to and investment in services that address the broader determinants of health is the unnamed culprit behind why the United States spends so much on health care but continues to lag behind in health outcomes.