Improving Health Outcomes in the US: Let’s Stop Relying on People Swimming Upstream
NEJM December 18, 2020
Simply urging people to choose healthy behavior will never be enough to make the U.S. healthier, increase our life expectancy, or reduce our healthcare spending, because technology and the structure of our modern world all but force us into unhealthy behavior and make healthy choices difficult or impossible. We must embrace structural changes to make healthier living an easy choice.
The United States ranks 36th in life expectancy despite spending more than any country on health care. This status cannot improve no matter how much we encourage individuals to try harder to engage in healthy behavior. Technology has, over time, created a modern world for...