title: Public Health, Embodied History, and Social Justice: Looking Forward.
abstract: This essay was delivered as a commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health on May 17, 2015. Reflecting on events spanning from 1990 to 1999 to 2015, when I gave my first, second, and third commencement talks at the school, I discuss four notable features of our present era and offer five insights for ensuring that health equity be the guiding star to orient us all. The four notable features are: (1) growing recognition of the planetary emergency of global climate change; (2) almost daily headlines about armed conflicts and atrocities; (3) growing public awareness of and debate about epic levels of income and wealth inequalities; and (4) growing activism about police killings and, more broadly, "Black Lives Matter." The five insights are: (1) public health is a public good, not a commodity; (2) the "tragedy of the commons" is a canard; the lack of a common good is what ails us; (3) good science is not enough, and bad science is harmful; (4) good evidence--however vital--is not enough to change the world; and (5) history is vital, because we live our history, embodied. Our goal: a just and sustainable world in which we and every being on this planet may truly thrive.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA nkrieger@hsph.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Krieger
mesh_terms: D057231:Climate Change; D006291:Health Policy; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D012935:Social Justice; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014857:Warfare
keywords: embodiment; epidemiology; health equity; public health; social justice