About
Public health commissioner Leana Wen gives an insider’s account of public health and its crucial role—from opioid addiction to global pandemic—and tells an inspiring story of her journey from homeless refugee to being named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.
“Public health saved your life today—you just don’t know it,” is a phrase that Leana Wen likes to use. You don’t know it because good public health is invisible. It becomes visible only in its absence, when it is underfunded and ignored, a bitter truth laid bare as never before by the carnage of Covid-19.
From the frontlines of public health crises, Leana Wen—emergency doctor, health commissioner for Baltimore, and former president of Planned Parenthood—has led the fight against the opioid epidemic, outbreaks of infectious disease, infant mortality, and Covid-19 disinformation. Here in vivid detail, drawing on her deep experience, Wen unveils the invisible hand of public health, showing how it uniquely encompasses science, advocacy, medicine, and politics; how innovative programs can treat gun violence as a contagious disease and racism as a health issue; how public health plays a key role in protecting the vulnerable and keeping streets safe. It is public health, she insists, that ensures that citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live does not determine whether they live.
Leana Wen’s own story is a uniquely American one, of a child refugee from China whose parents relied on food stamps and were at times homeless. That child went on to attend college at thirteen, graduate from medical school, and turn to public health as the way to make a difference in the country that had offered her such vast possibilities.
Delivered with gripping storytelling and unmatched authority, Public Health Saved Your Life Today offers an uplifting memoir, a window on to the inner workings of public health, and a galvanizing call to understand health for all as a fundamental human right.
“Public health saved your life today—you just don’t know it,” is a phrase that Leana Wen likes to use. You don’t know it because good public health is invisible. It becomes visible only in its absence, when it is underfunded and ignored, a bitter truth laid bare as never before by the carnage of Covid-19.
From the frontlines of public health crises, Leana Wen—emergency doctor, health commissioner for Baltimore, and former president of Planned Parenthood—has led the fight against the opioid epidemic, outbreaks of infectious disease, infant mortality, and Covid-19 disinformation. Here in vivid detail, drawing on her deep experience, Wen unveils the invisible hand of public health, showing how it uniquely encompasses science, advocacy, medicine, and politics; how innovative programs can treat gun violence as a contagious disease and racism as a health issue; how public health plays a key role in protecting the vulnerable and keeping streets safe. It is public health, she insists, that ensures that citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live does not determine whether they live.
Leana Wen’s own story is a uniquely American one, of a child refugee from China whose parents relied on food stamps and were at times homeless. That child went on to attend college at thirteen, graduate from medical school, and turn to public health as the way to make a difference in the country that had offered her such vast possibilities.
Delivered with gripping storytelling and unmatched authority, Public Health Saved Your Life Today offers an uplifting memoir, a window on to the inner workings of public health, and a galvanizing call to understand health for all as a fundamental human right.