Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem?

by Lisa Cooper

Overview

How can we all work together to eliminate the avoidable injustices that plague our health care system and society?

Health is determined by far more than a person's choices and behaviors. Social and political conditions, economic forces, physical environments, institutional policies, health care system features, social relationships, risk behaviors, and genetic predispositions all contribute to physical and mental well-being. In America and around the world, many of these factors are derived from a lingering history of unequal opportunities and unjust treatment for people of color and other vulnerable communities. But they aren't the only ones who suffer because of these disparities—everyone is impacted by the factors that degrade health for the least advantaged among us.

In Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? Dr. Lisa Cooper shows how we can work together to eliminate the injustices that plague our health care system and society. The book follows Cooper's journey from her childhood in Liberia, West Africa, to her thirty-year career working first as a clinician and then as a health equity researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Drawing on her experiences, it explores how differences in communication and the quality of relationships affect health outcomes. Through her work as the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, it details the actions and policies needed to reduce and eliminate the conditions that are harming us all.

Cooper reveals with compelling detail how health disparities are crippling our health care system and society, driving up health care costs, leading to adverse health outcomes and ultimately an enormous burden of human suffering. Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? demonstrates the ways in which everyone's health is interconnected, both within communities and across the globe. Cooper calls for a new kind of herd immunity, when a sufficiently high proportion of people, across race and social class, become immune to harmful social conditions through "vaccination" with solidarity among groups and opportunities created by institutional and societal practices and policies. By acknowledging and acting upon that interconnectedness, she believes everyone can help to create a healthier world.

Features

• Raises readers' health care inequities literacy through an approachable narrative with specific examples
• Introduces the concept of "herd immunity" as it applies to building communal awareness of systemic injustices
• Features sections that underscore key takeaways
• Includes contributions from the world's leading minds through their research findings and quotations
• Guides readers on what can be done at an individual level as a patient, public health professional, and community member
• Includes inspiring stories of effective health equity studies and practices around the world, from Ghana's ADHINCRA Project addressing hypertension control to Baltimore's BRIDGE Study for depression in African Americans and the Maryland and Pennsylvania–based RICH LIFE Project for hypertension, diabetes, and other medical conditions

Johns Hopkins Wavelengths

In classrooms, field stations, and laboratories in Baltimore and around the world, the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors of Johns Hopkins University are opening the boundaries of our understanding of many of the world's most complex challenges. The Johns Hopkins Wavelengths book series brings readers inside their stories, illustrating how their pioneering discoveries benefit people in their neighborhoods and across the globe in artificial intelligence, cancer research, food systems' environmental impacts, health equity, science diplomacy, and other critical arenas of study. Through these compelling narratives, their insights will spark conversations from dorm rooms to dining rooms to boardrooms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421441153
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	06/29/2021
Series:	Johns Hopkins Wavelengths
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	263,894
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lisa Cooper, MD, MPH, is a physician and public health researcher, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in Equity in Health and Healthcare within the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, and the founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. A 2007 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Dr. Cooper serves as a trustee of The Carter Center and as a member of The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). She is a frequent contributor to media outlets including The Economist, Essence, The Guardian, NPR, the New York Times, and PBS NewsHour.

What People are Saying About This

Garth Graham

In this commanding narrative, Dr. Lisa Cooper—groundbreaking researcher, MacArthur Foundation 'Genius,' founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity—outlines innovative health equity solutions that can move us toward a societal 'herd immunity' where we're tackling not just clinical disease but the deep-seeded impacts of structural racism.

James R. Gavin III

A compelling and enlightening record of Dr. Cooper's journey of awakening to the origins and widespread impacts of health disparities and to the need for health equity in local and global communities. She shares the richness of her experiences and the piercing insights that have fueled her celebrated quest to unmask the underlying causes of and to propose solutions for the pervasive and persistent disparities whose deleterious effects in disadvantaged communities have broad effects on all others.

From the Publisher

Dr. Cooper's personal and professional journey is both riveting and inspiring; the scenes from her childhood in Liberia alone offer a global history lesson that resonates in present-day America. The unique experiences she brings to this unprecedented moment of the intersection of community health and racial reckoning make Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? not only an essential read but a central question for our time.
—Marc H. Morial, President/CEO, National Urban League / former Mayor of New Orleans

In this commanding narrative, Dr. Lisa Cooper—groundbreaking researcher, MacArthur Foundation 'Genius,' founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity—outlines innovative health equity solutions that can move us toward a societal 'herd immunity' where we're tackling not just clinical disease but the deep-seeded impacts of structural racism.
—Garth Graham, MD, MPH, Global Head of Public Health, Google Inc. / former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

A compelling and enlightening record of Dr. Cooper's journey of awakening to the origins and widespread impacts of health disparities and to the need for health equity in local and global communities. She shares the richness of her experiences and the piercing insights that have fueled her celebrated quest to unmask the underlying causes of and to propose solutions for the pervasive and persistent disparities whose deleterious effects in disadvantaged communities have broad effects on all others.
—James R. Gavin III, MD, PhD, Emory University School of Medicine / Chairman Emeritus, Partnership for a Healthier America, and author of Dr. Gavin's Health Guide for African Americans: How to Keep Yourself and Your Children Well

Drawing on a lifetime of global experiences and decades of research, Dr. Cooper convincingly argues that racial inequities are an enormous economic and moral burden that hurts all of us. With an evidence-informed optimism, Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? is a desperately needed, innovative playbook to tackle the unfinished chapter in America's struggle with racial inequity with renewed vigor and competence. It shows us where to begin in dismantling the upstream structural factors that create racial and socioeconomic differences in health.
—David R. Williams, MPH, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

David R. Williams

Drawing on a lifetime of global experiences and decades of research, Dr. Cooper convincingly argues that racial inequities are an enormous economic and moral burden that hurts all of us. With an evidence-informed optimism, Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? is a desperately needed, innovative playbook to tackle the unfinished chapter in America's struggle with racial inequity with renewed vigor and competence. It shows us where to begin in dismantling the upstream structural factors that create racial and socioeconomic differences in health.

Marc H. Morial

Dr. Cooper's personal and professional journey is both riveting and inspiring; the scenes from her childhood in Liberia alone offer a global history lesson that resonates in present-day America. The unique experiences she brings to this unprecedented moment of the intersection of community health and racial reckoning make Why Are Health Disparities Everyone's Problem? not only an essential read but a central question for our time.

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Judith M. Butler, DNP, CNM, WHNP, CNE (El Rio Birth and Women's Health Center)
Description: This book uses a story format of the author's life as an African child and then an African American physician and health disparity researcher at John Hopkins University to describe her work. Her research is the glue that binds the topics from patient-physician relationships, to solutions, to health disparities all together. There are three sections that address racism specifically: 1) How is racism a public health issue? 2) How to be an empowered patient, and 3) The importance of racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions. All are concrete and useful.
Purpose: In the preface, the author mentions that COVID-19 acted as a catalyst to highlight the many inequities faced by people of color. The purpose of this book is to show that there is a path for societies to achieve health equity and social justice and that this achievement will benefit us all. The objectives are worthy and the book is needed. The book meets the objectives by giving healthcare professionals, researchers, health centers, policymakers, and global health advisers a path to achieve health equity. The path is at times vague, but is nonetheless present.
Audience: The book is written for health professionals, healthcare universities, as well as policymakers. The book mainly mentions physicians, but could have been more inclusive of all health professionals such as nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, as well as physician assistants. Additionally, community health workers played a vital role in one study. The author is a credible authority on health equity, is well published, and has won many national awards.
Features: Some of the best aspects of this book are the use of community health workers to counsel and train patients to become more empowered, engaged, active participants. The book coaches physicians (providers) on how to become partners with their patients and use motivational interviewing techniques. Lastly, another unique feature is the use of communities as active participants in the research - where it is needed, what is needed, and what resources are available or missing. The three "how to" sections, which cover 1) The RELATE checklist for providers, 2) How to be an empowered patient, and 3) Involving communities in solving disparities, are specific and helpful.
Assessment: As a health professional whose specialties are healthcare quality improvement and health equity, I found this book a little vague. The areas with checklists are great and I loved the well-roundedness of patients, providers, and communities all working together. However, I found the frequent mention of the author's awards a little self-serving even though they did facilitate her ability to continue her work.

Doody's Review Service