Stephen Bezruchka

Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation

How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who live in other wealthy nations, despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Why? Embark on a journey to unravel the profound impact of public policies on American health from before birth in Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation.

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Inequality Kills Us All

How economic and social inequality leads to poorer health and higher mortality, and how living in a society with entrenched hierarchies increases the negative effects of illnesses for everyone.

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Stephen Bezruchka, who began treating individuals as an emergency physician, has changed his focus to treating countries as a population health doctor.

This shift resulted from his recognizing that for living in the United States, his health was compromised in ways that it wouldn’t be if he had been born in Japan, Slovenia, Sweden, or Spain. By moving to the U.S. from his birthplace, Canada, his potential for leading a healthy life was reduced.

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Treating countries is a tall order, requiring vastly different strategies than those used for healing sick people.

Two “medicines” are required to treat nations. One is to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, thus reducing economic inequality. The other uses the gains from that redistribution to create healthy conditions in early life, when a large fraction of adult health is programmed.

This website presents a prescription to make the United States healthy again. It was one of the healthiest nations in the early 1950s, but now more than 50 countries achieve better health for their inhabitants.

The Prescription

  • The Book

    1

    Born Sick in the USA

    Details our poor health in the United States beginning in early life and presents what needs to be done.

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  • The Book

    2

    Inequality Kills Us All: COVID-19’s Health Lessons for the World

    Presents the history, examination, test results and required treatment for the patient whose name is the United States of America. The prescription is detailed in practical concepts. What you can do?

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  • Resources

    3

    His other writing, both for the academia and for the real world including book chapters, journal articles, newspaper essays, and more.

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  • Teaching

    4

    Teaching in courses for undergraduate and graduate students designed to look at countries and how they achieve their health.

    Other teaching efforts have been carried out from youth in primary schools and out to the end of life with courses for retirees.

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About Stephen Bezruchka

Stephen Bezruchka is Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Health Systems & Population Health and Global Health at the School of Public Health, University of Washington. At UW he received the 2002 Outstanding Teacher Award, the 2008 Faculty Community Service Award, the 2017 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, and the 2018 Communicating Public Health to the Public Award.

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