The Turning Point

The HIV pandemic changed our view of health care and its delivery in dramatic ways. Perhaps Covid-19 will change our view of health and who has access to it.

Recognizing that context shapes health behaviors, and that they are often driven by broad social phenomena, will help to promote healthy behavior in the future.

As we look to learn from the Covid-19 moment, it seems worth asking—what are the conditions under which we may be suitably cautious about the science? Three principal conditions come to our mind.

Public health is having its moment in the spotlight. It’s worth a pause to consider current challenges, and how to avoid overstating what we know and the confidence with which we know it.

Covid-19 has brought about new public health surveillance methods.

Now is the moment to think creatively about ways to bridge intractable racial and socioeconomic health gaps exposed by Covid-19 that existed prior to the pandemic.

We need a health system that generates health, and there are three changes we can make to get there.

Clarity about the goalposts of any health condition benefits us as a society responding to new and evolving diseases.

Acknowledging the grief of many, providing adequate mental health support to meet rising demand, and creating visible markers of the pandemic will help to mark the grief of this moment now and in the future.

Although it feels like it never will, grief passes. And so grief, when it is with us, carries within it a future.