The Cure for Everything by Michelle A. Williams, SM ’88, ScD ’91
Michelle A. Williams, SM ’88, ScD ’91, is a professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University School of Medicine and former Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Chan School, where she also served as the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development and currently holds an adjunct professorship.
Williams is an internationally renowned epidemiologist; award-winning educator; and has authored more than 550 peer-reviewed research articles and is recognized as a leading voice in public health science and global health.
Williams’ latest endeavor is The Cure for Everything: The Epic Struggle for Public Health and a Radical Vision for Human Thriving.
At a moment when the U.S. is experiencing declining life expectancy, record levels of public distrust, and rising political attacks on science, Williams offers a gripping narrative of how public health—not medicine alone—lifted humanity out of a world of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death; why public health was sidelined in favor of clinical medicine; and how that shift left Americans uniquely vulnerable to poor health outcomes and medical misinformation.
Through vivid storytelling, Williams shows that it was public health interventions like clean water, sanitation, housing reform, nutrition, workplace protections, and vaccine mandates, not pharmaceutical drugs, that doubled life expectancy and fueled prosperity between the mid-1800s and today, as well as how during that time, funding and political support shifted away from public health and its emphasis on community-wide, preventative solutions and toward the reactive, profit-driven, individually focused model that characterizes our health care system today.
The book, co-authored by Linda Marsa, blends together history, narrative reporting, and cutting-edge science; and makes a compelling case for public health to guide politics and policy.
Richard Tofel, former president of ProPublica and author of Sounding the Trumpet, says “Michelle Williams is unapologetic in defense of a vision of public health rooted in justice and committed to the facts.”
By authoring this book, Williams hopes to show that “a society that fails to improve health for everyone, regardless of race or income, has failed in its most basic purpose.”
