On the trends and ideas that will shape health in the coming year.
This is the first Healthiest Goldfish essay of 2025. I hope all the readers of this newsletter had a happy, restorative holiday season with family and friends. For my part, I spent much of the season moving with my family from Boston to St. Louis, to join the new School of Public Health at Washington University. It is an exciting time, one of transition, of engaging with the possibilities of the moment and looking ahead to the future. Thank you to the many who have participated in this process—those at WashU, those in the wider world of public health, and you, the reader of The Healthiest Goldfish. It takes the proverbial village to build a healthier world, and, in this time of change, it is just such a village that we are building around the ideas that generate better health for all.
The start of a new year is a time for looking ahead, for thinking about the challenges and opportunities of the moment and how they might shape the next twelve months and beyond. In today’s essay, I would like to reflect a bit on what is next for health in 2025. What are the key trends that will likely define the pursuit of healthier populations in the coming year? What should our priorities be as we aspire to do the most good in this moment? We are in a time of social and political churn, with a range of influential forces shaping the present and, potentially, the future. However, it seems to me that the following four trends will be of special salience to health in the coming year, reflecting the ongoing work of shaping a forward-looking vision for health and suggesting our engagement with these forces should be at the heart of our collective priorities.
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