Investing in Health and Wellbeing

The proverbial benefits of prevention over cure are self-evident-and yet we are reluctant to invest in protecting and improving our health.

When a high-risk, high-value hazard can be averted rapidly, with certainty and relatively low cost, protecting health should be more appealing. Similar reasoning applies when the goal is to enhance health and wellbeing, not merely to prevent illness. - So why is prevention a low priority for health services? Why is the idea of 'sin tax' so misconceived? Why is cigarette smoking still so commonplace?

Investing in Health and Wellbeing: When Prevention is Better than Cure, Second Edition provides a framework to investigate health promotion and protection, illustrating the principles with practical examples. Application of these ideas helps to explain why the world was not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic, why deadly infections like tuberculosis are neglected, why billions still do not have access to safe sanitation, and why the response to climate change has been so slow. Much more money and effort are invested in health promotion and disease prevention today than is commonly thought, but the enormous avoidable burden of illness is reason to look for ways of investing still more. Previously published as The Great Health Dilemma (ISBN: 9780198853824) in 2021, this second edition puts the topic of prevention centre stage.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.