Perspective

Edmund Pellegrino warned about the growing commodification of health and health care in the United States. After twenty-five years, it is worth revisiting Pellegrino’s critique and examining this critique in the current era. More

The global wellness industry has multifaceted impacts on health and well-being, including through the sale and consumption of wellness products, the provision of health information to consumers, and the promotion of specific norms and values. Despite its growing prominence, the wellness industry and its impacts on health and policymaking remain understudied. This article examines how the wellness industry operates as a commercial, social, and political determinant of health. More

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by President Trump on July 4, 2025 will cut $1 trillion from federal health care programs over the coming decade and cause 10 million individuals to become uninsured according to the Congressional Budget Office. Most analyses of the bill’s impacts have assumed they would be the inverse of those documented from previous coverage expansions. An examination of past coverage cuts might yield additional insights into the probable impacts of this legislation on the medical care and health of the needy. More

Disparities in health often arise due to unfair or unjust social arrangements making them inequities. These social arrangements are codified through structures—laws, policies, regulations, practices, and norms. More

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, established the first nationwide Medicaid work requirement, replacing prior state-specific Section 1115 demonstrations with a uniform federal standard More

Primary care is the foundation of most health systems; yet across diverse countries, structures, policies, and payment models, it is under threat. More

The United States is an outlier worldwide in its permissive regulatory landscape for direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug promotion. Recent proposals to restrict DTC prescription drug advertising raise questions about potential challenges under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which protects commercial speech. More

Despite spending more per capita on healthcare than any other nation, the United States experiences declining life expectancy and increasing chronic disease burden—a paradox reflecting fundamental limitations in the current treatment-centered, facility-based care system. This paper introduces Neighborhood Nursing, an innovative universal care infrastructure designed to shift the US healthcare toward proactive, prevention-centered care organized geographically in neighborhoods. More

Throughout the last 50 years, the disability rights movement has made significant progress in providing statutory protections for people with disabilities in the United States. More

A growing body of scholarship and practice in public health attests to the importance of addressing differences in power as a fundamental determinant of health inequities. To pursue health equity, public health practitioners must move beyond identifying differences in health outcomes among populations (disparities) to articulating why those differences are unfair or unjust (inequities) and then identifying structures, such as laws, policies, practices, and norms, that advantage some and disadvantage others. More