Some thoughts, informed by recent conversations, about the role of public health in the present moment.
Last month, Dr. Sarah Dupont and I published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine on science, competing values, and tradeoffs in public health decision-making. We looked at these issues through the lens of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece was animated by a concern for balancing the core values of public health with the pragmatic demands of advising policymakers in a context of incomplete or evolving information. We argued that public health should shift away from the all-or-nothing dynamic that characterized many pandemic-era debates (over masking, lockdowns, school closures, etc.), recognizing that the local context in which decisions are made can involve a level of nuance often lost in the broader public debate. It is up to us to provide data-informed guidance to policymakers as they weigh this nuance and consider the tradeoffs inherent in choices about health policy. In doing so, we should continue to be guided, always, by our core values: the pursuit of healthy populations, with special concern for the marginalized and vulnerable.
Read the full piece here.