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Prescription for a Healthy Nation: A New Approach to Improving Our Lives by Fixing Our Everyday World Paperback – May 1, 2006

by Tom Farley M.D. (Author), Deb Cohen (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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Introducing a new way of thinking about health: public health experts Tom Farley and Deborah A. Cohen show us that the antidote to our ever-growing rates of obesity and chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, lies not in our medical care system or in more health education but rather in how our environment affects our behavior.
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  1. Print length
    296 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Beacon Press
  4. Publication date
    May 1, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    6.01 x 0.78 x 9.03 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0807021172
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0807021170
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Prescription for a Healthy Nation is an excellent book that successfully introduces a new approach to today's epidemics.--Brian C. Reed, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association

"Prescription for a Healthy Nation is the best book about public health I've read in years . . . Their important message: it is not enough just to take personal responsibility for our own actions-we also have to work for changes in society that make it easier for everyone to stay healthy."--Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health

"If we can create an environment that makes us sick, Farley and Cohen contend, we can create an environment more conducive to good health. It's just more challenging to do so."--Donna Chavez, Booklist

"Prescription for a Healthy Nation is highly readable, interesting, and informative. More important, it offers the reader an approach to good health that is balanced and practical." --Jeffrey Koplan, former director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

"A wise new book."--Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times

About the Author

Tom Farley is chair of the Community Health Sciences Department at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He lives in New Orleans. Deborah A. Cohen,a senior natural scientist at the RAND Corporation, lives in Los Angeles.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon Press (May 1, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0807021172
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807021170
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.01 x 0.78 x 9.03 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

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Tom Farley

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
30 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Anonymous 1
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Great eye-opening book that honestly everyone should read. I had to get it for a class but it was very enjoyable and really makes you think about your lifestyle. A must read!
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monicat3311
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2012
Verified Purchase
This book was in great condition and it arrived a day early. I had it just in time for school. I would recommend this seller to everyone!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2015
Verified Purchase
Excellent quality of the copy even though it was previously used. And timely delivery
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amazonreader
1.0 out of 5 stars Outdated and biased
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2023
This book feels like it was written in the 1930s-- it is poorly researched, heavily biased, and offers nothing but misinformation to the field.
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Reynalda Davis
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, thought-proviking, for action oriented thinkers ONLY
Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2015
Verified Purchase
Very pleased with the paradigm shift brought out in book.
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Rhandhali
5.0 out of 5 stars One Of The Most Important Books In Public Health To Date
Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2009
The title says it all - this is quite simply one of the most important books in public health to date. The authors, Farley and Cohen, make a convincing case against the "education" model of public health that has failed, so far, to prevent or remedy the societal ills of smoking, obesity, heart disease and violence. We have normalized bad health and bad habits in our society - being overweight is not unusual, nor is heart disease or even violence. The focus of public health intervention has followed one of two typical paths - either interfere directly with the extreme cases, such as chronic alcoholics or morbidly obese individuals, or to publish a pamphlet and trust in people to make the right decision on their own. While this is a gross oversimplification it brings up two important points.

We know that education is ineffective - look at D.A.R.E., which is well funded and well supported but has ultimately had no effect on drug consumption among its graduates. Anti-obesity education by public health officials cannot compete with an environment that fosters overconsumption. Billions of dollars are spent on advertising "junk food", high calorie colas, sugary cereal and snacks (particularly to children). Through sixty years of marketing research everything from an advertising campaign to the placment of an item on a grocery store shelf is calculated to get the most yield - consumption - per dollar spent. A few million a year on a public health campaign cannot compete with that.

Medicine has always focused on the "bad apples", those that are sick and need attention. We are infatuated with dramatic interventions such as massive weightloss in formerly obese patients, or liver transplantation in chronic alcoholics. These extreme cases represent only a very tiny portion of the overall population and a fraction of overall costs related to a particular behavior. Small measures that will in all liklihood not affect the extremes of unhealthy behavior. If everyone in the country who was only slightly overweight dropped five pounds then as a nation we are much healthier and have done more to save on healthcare costs than would be seen in 10,000 gastric bypasses.

Lastly there is the radical notion of "healthscaping" - changing our environment to make us healthier. Things like designing more walkable and bikable neighborhoods will encourage exercise, or discouraging spur-of-the-moment drinking by barring the sale of prechilled beer, are small things that can be done to make us a healthier society. It's not a new concept - we made our environment healthier by installing sanitary sewers and making access to clean drinkable water almost universal, saving more lives at a stroke than interventional medicine has in its entire history.

This is a very powerful book and should be required reading for anyone hoping to be involved in medicine, public health, health law, health policy or breathing.
3 people found this helpful
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Sara Schultz
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and interesting ideas. A worthy read among the masses of healthcare ideas.
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2010
In reading Prescription for a Healthy Nation by Tom Farley, M.D., Deborah A. Cohen M.D. this week, I pondered our health care system. It really does seem like we're looking at the wrong factors. With rising rates of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, we wonder how can we reduce the costs of medication, healthcare and fix health insurance in general, while our population is becoming more unhealthy with each passing minute. It's true, something needs to change.

I am in the business of health care. I care about health. I want to live a healthy lifestyle, unencumbered by disease or injury myself. I'd also like to see that for the rest of our society. But we live in a world where it seems that fitness and health are not priorities, rather, they are additional responsiblities on people's already too busy lifestyles. Which is why this book was actually quite interesting, discussing things like shelf space devoted to food products, pricing as related to people's consumption/purchasing tendencies, children walking to school now vs 20 years ago-- generally questioning our assumptions on what's broken with healthcare and society and how it could be changed. (Cutting healthcare costs and improving medicine vs changing lifestyles and cityscapes.)

It's not just the system that's broken, it's also the people who are using it. Just looking around, it's obvious that most people are not healthy, fit or at a comfortable weight. In my office alone, a non-scientific survey says more than 50% (and likely nearer 75%) would like to lose weight, but what are they doing about it? Most talk about it, but do not act on it.

The suggestion of this book is to work on changing society to create an environment which encourges healthy choices, whether it's by walking and biking, planting a garden, handing out free condoms, or installing safety bars so children don't fall off balconies. It is less about education (most education does not affect the rates of smoking, condom use, weight loss, and so on) and guilting people into improving behaviours than it is about making healhy choices accessible and easy.

[...]
2 people found this helpful
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