To shape a healthier world, we need to resist Manichean narratives and engage with reality in all its messy nuance.
We have been living in divided times. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when this started, but a strong contender for that moment would have to be 2015, which, not coincidentally, was around the time of the rise to prominence of Donald Trump. Before then, the country had known divisions, our political system characterized by entrenched ideological positions, but we more or less felt we knew where we were collectively headed. Our future seemed to be one in which the push and pull of two different views of the country continually jostled for space, with one occasionally prevailing over the other. This jostling would sometimes result in constructive engagement, with both sides recognizing the complexity of issues. We in public health found ourselves working to promote ideas and policies that generate health, reaching whenever possible across partisan divides to achieve this goal. That the world and country were getting healthier was testament to our achievements. That there was so much we could do better, so many getting left behind, was testament to how much more we still had to do.
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