5 Public Health Books
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
- The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston
- Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
- Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer
If you can only read five great books about public health, check out these hard-hitting public health related book options. Covering a range of topics that promises to give a full taste of the field and population health, these are page-turners, not dense tomes requiring a Ph.D to complete. This book list covers health problems and concerns from natural disasters, bioethics, infectious diseases, communicable diseases and international humanitarian response on the front lines.
1. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack
Take your understanding of bioethics to a new level with this classic public health book. Journalist Rebecca Skloot digs deep into the life of Henrietta Lacks, a poor, black farmer whose cells were harvested without her knowledge in the segregated wing of Johns Hopkins University. Now, those cells have been used thousands of times in laboratory studies – all without the knowledge of Lacks’ surviving family. Skloot brings the story of Lacks’ descendants to life and explores their complicated relationship with their ancestor’s legacy. Her work led to The Henrietta Lacks Foundation to connect oppressed minorities with necessary healthcare services and improving health equity and racial inequities.
2. Being Mortal: Medicine and What
Matters in the End
How is end-of-life care shaped in the United States? What are the medical, psychological and legal considerations that control nursing homes and advanced directives and their responsibility for their patients’ well being? This book examines the goals of medicine during aging and death. Frequently they are counter to the interest of the human spirit, with hospitals isolating dying patients, checking vitals and working to extend life with procedures that in the end extend suffering. As a practicing surgeon in the modern world, Gawande brings deeper understanding to the limitation of his profession, and argues that end of life quality is the goal desired by patients and their families. With examples of more humane and fulfilling models for promoting human health and improving health outcomes for the infirm and dependent, Dr. Gawande discusses varieties of hospice care that exhibit a rich and dignified end of life is possible. This is a must-read for anyone interesting in health policy or administration.
3. The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story
Learn more than you’ve ever wanted to know about horrifying viral hemorrhagic fevers and how close the United States came to a terrifying epidemic during the Ebola epidemic in the 1990s. Richard Preston’s non-fiction book explains a gripping history of the deadly virus from the Central African rain forest that suddenly appears in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. With no cures and a 90% death rate within days of getting the virus, this hair raising account is shocking and shouldn’t be ignored. The author investigates a deadly shipment to an American warehouse and the military’s response. Despite its age, this book on public health epidemiology continues to enthrall audiences with its scarier than fiction account.
4. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
How do natural disasters affect public health workers? How can physicians and nurses ethically and effectively triage patients in resource-limited environments? Sheri Fink explores these questions in her analysis of Memorial Hospital’s actions in the midst of Hurricane Katrina. As a physician and reporter, the author reconstructs 5 days at the memorial Medical Center, drawing readers into the lives of those struggling to maintain life and survive in the midst of chaos. Without power and climbing temperatures, exhausted workers chose to designate those last for rescue. Months later, several healthcare workers faced criminal allegations that they injected some patients with drugs to speed their demise. If you’re considering a career in humanitarian or global health response efforts, you’ll want to read this book. The original New York Times article won a Pulitzer Prize, and this expanded book version has won numerous awards.
5. Pathologies of Power
This book combines public health analysis and medical anthropology in an engaging style packed with case studies to keep your interest, but author Dr. Paul Farmer doesn’t pull punches. You’ll learn more about what works and what is broken in international public health from this book than you’d pick up in a year of classes. You’ll be fired up for a career in public health or international development once you’ve finished this work. Dr. Farmer has a prolific career as a dedicated health catalyst, but this book is his most powerful work and the best entry point to his life’s argument that everyone deserves effective health care regardless of income. As a physician and anthropologist, Paul Farmer draws on his more than twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia. His engaging book suggests that the most important struggle of our time is promoting the social and economic rights of the world’s poor.
Public health is a diverse and exciting field, and public health problems of all kinds are among the greatest challenges of our time. From environmental health to mental health, from gender bias to discrimination against black people, disease detectives are searching for answers to our long standing and newly emerging public health concerns. This list of five great books can only scratch the surface of the exciting, life-changing works out there, and is sure to spark your interest in public health on the local and global level, disaster relief and social determinants of health.
MPH staff, 2023
Related Resources: