Public Health Expert Sandro Galea, MD, Delivers Lecture on Shared Health

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 Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. 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.

Dr. Galea, who holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto and graduate degrees from Harvard and Columbia universities, bolstered his claims with substantial data drawn from the World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control, Congressional Budget Office, and Census Bureau.

Following his lecture, Dr. Galea took questions from a panel of students, alumni, and faculty. During this portion of the event, he emphasized the importance of how health experts talk about health. He said they have not been very good at telling the story about what matters to health and encouraged his audience to “shape the narrative that we care about the forces that generate our health.”

The Egan Lecture was launched in 2005 with the generous support of the McKeen Fund. According to Egan School Dean Meredith Kazer, PhD, APRN, FAAN, “it was designed to bring the entire school of nursing and health studies community together with healthcare partners in the community in the presence of a national expert.”

This year’s event was made possible with support by Mr. James Daly and the McKeen Fund with additional support provided by Open VISIONS Forum sponsors Moffly Media, Delamar Southport, Delamar Spa, and Artisan Restaurant.

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