-
Get a Free Issue
of our Ezine!
How We Can Reinvent Medicine to Extend Our Best Years
by Kenneth L. Brigham
Our health care system is crippled by desperate efforts to prevent the inevitable. A third of the national Medicare budget - nearly $175 billion - is spent on the final year of life, and a third of that amount on the final month, often on expensive (and futile) treatments. Such efforts betray a fundamental flaw in how we think about healthcare: we squander resources on hopeless situations, instead of using them to actually improve health.
In Predictive Health, distinguished doctors Kenneth Brigham and Michael M.E. Johns propose a solution: invest earlier - and use science and technology to make healthcare more available and affordable. Every child would begin life with a post-natal genetic screen, when potential risk - say for type II diabetes or heart disease - would be found.
More data on biology, behavior, and environment would be captured throughout her life. Using this information, health-care workers and the people they care for could forge personal strategies for healthier living long before a small glitch blows up into major disease. This real health care wouldn't just replace much of modern disease care - it would make it obsolete. The result, according to Brigham and Johns, will be a life defined by a long stay at top physical and mental form, rather than an early peak and long decline. Accomplishing this goal will require new tools, new clinics, fewer doctors and more mentors, smarter companies, and engaged patients. In short, it will require a revolution. Thanks to a decade-long collaboration between Brigham, Johns and others, it is already underway.
An optimistic plan for reducing or eliminating many chronic diseases as well as reforming our faltering medical system, Predictive Health is a deeply knowledgeable, deeply humane proposal for how we can reallocate expenses and resources to prolong the best years of life, rather than extending the worst.
"Much of the book's appeal will be to medical professionals, students, and scientifically minded general readers, but a final chapter brings the discourse down to earth with a moving expression of what it means to live and die well." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A clear, insightful vision of a health care system that could bring about a better, healthier world." - Kirkus Reviews
"Predictive Health is a remarkable book about a remarkable vision. The fact that there are often diverging views regarding the future of healthcare is evident; what's less obvious are straightforward and innovative solutions. Doctors Kenneth Brigham and Michael Johns offer an ingeniously simple proposal - to shift medicine's focus from treating disease to maintaining and maximizing health. Characteristic of the integrative, forward-looking thinking of Dr. Johns, who long ago established himself as a thought leader in health care, Predictive Health is essential reading for anyone who is interested in preserving their health." - Alex Gorsky, CEO, Johnson & Johnson
"In Predictive Health, the authors make a strong case that we must turn our current health care system on its head, focusing not on simply caring for the sick, but on caring for the healthy - and keeping them so. Preventing disease is our greatest weapon in health care today, and Brigham and Johns paint a possible future in which we capitalize on this knowledge fully. Our pocketbooks demand we act on this, as does the fact we can save countless more lives if we do." - John R. Seffrin, Ph.D., CEO, American Cancer Society
"Predictive Health is a refreshing read - it looks at medicine in a whole new light. Instead of focusing on disease, the authors explore new ways to think about our own health. They weave together basic and applied science - including the human genome and its impact - in an understandable way. Above all, their main message is that life and death are intertwined and we humans need to learn to deal with that concept as we go through life." - Edward D. Miller, M.D., Dean/CEO Emeritus, Johns Hopkins Medicine
This information about Predictive Health was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kenneth Brigham, M.D., is a professor of medicine and associate vice president for health affairs at Emory University. Michael M. E. Johns, M.D., is chancellor and former executive vice president for health affairs at Emory University. Over the past eight years they have collaborated to develop the Emory Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute and its Center for Health Discovery and Well Being. Both authors live in Atlanta, Georgia.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
.png)
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
