Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health

by Leana Wen

Overview

From medical expert Leana Wen, MD, Lifelines is an insider's account of public health and its crucial role—from opioid addiction to global pandemic—and an inspiring story of her journey from struggling immigrant to being one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People.

“Public health saved your life today—you just don’t know it,” is a phrase that Dr. Leana Wen likes to use. You don’t know it because good public health is invisible. It becomes visible only in its absence, when it is underfunded and ignored, a bitter truth laid bare as never before by the devastation of COVID-19.

Leana Wen—emergency physician, former Baltimore health commissioner, CNN medical analyst, and Washington Post contributing columnist—has lived on the front lines of public health, leading the fight against the opioid epidemic, outbreaks of infectious disease, maternal and infant mortality, and COVID-19 disinformation. Here, in gripping detail, Wen lays bare the lifesaving work of public health and its innovative approach to social ills, treating gun violence as a contagious disease, for example, and racism as a threat to health.

Wen also tells her own uniquely American story: an immigrant from China, she and her family received food stamps and were at times homeless despite her parents working multiple jobs. That child went on to attend college at thirteen, become a Rhodes scholar, and turn to public health as the way to make a difference in the country that had offered her such possibilities.

Ultimately, she insists, it is public health that ensures citizens are not robbed of decades of life, and that where children live does not determine whether they live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250186232
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/27/2021
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	1,113,195
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Dr. Leana Wen is an emergency physician, public health professor at George Washington University, and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is also a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and a CNN medical analyst. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating public health department. She is the author of the patient advocacy book, When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests. Dr. Wen lives with her husband and their two young children in Baltimore.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part I Learning

1 Chi Ku 11

2 Belonging 29

3 White Coat, Clenched Fist 43

4 Opening Pandora's Box 61

5 When Doctors Don't Listen 73

Part II Leading

6 Doctor for the City 93

7 Saving Lives Today 108

8 Treating Addiction as the Disease It Is 124

9 Unrest and Recovery 143

10 Putting the Face on Public Health 160

11 Hurt People Hurt People 175

12 Going Upstream 190

13 New Beginnings 209

Part III Transforming

14 Decisions 227

15 The Courage to Try 237

16 Preventable Harm 255

17 A Pandemic of Misinformation 271

18 The Invisible Hand of Public Health 287

19 COVID-19 Comes Home 299

Epilogue: Life Lessons 313

Acknowledgments 319

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

05/17/2021

Former Baltimore, Md., health commissioner Wen (coauthor, When Doctors Don’t Listen) combines memoir and advocacy in this stirring call for greater investment in public health programs to combat racism, poverty, gun violence, and other social ills. The daughter of Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. seeking political asylum, Wen graduated from college and entered medical school at age 18, specializing in emergency medicine because “the ER was the one place where every patient had to be seen and no one would be turned away.” She shares harrowing stories of patients who couldn’t afford their life-saving medications, and describes how a series of misdiagnoses delayed her mother’s cancer treatment. After her mother’s death, Wen helped start a center for “patient-centered care research” at George Washington University and became Baltimore’s health commissioner in 2014. During her tenure, she confronted the city’s opioid crisis by establishing treatment centers and training first responders in administering naloxone. The details of her family’s financial struggles and her tumultuous relationship with her mother add depth to Wen’s career retrospective, and she makes a persuasive case for reorienting the U.S. medical system to prioritize the most vulnerable. Readers will be inspired by Wen’s belief in the power of public health to make America better. (July)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2021

With her latest work, Wen (public health, George Washington Univ.; When Doctors Don't Listen) covers pertinent topics one would expect in a physician's book about public health for lay readers: reproductive health, mother and infant mortality, opiate addiction, the COVID-19 pandemic, and more. The difference between this work and other recent books about public health, however, is Wen's lived experience. She uses anecdotes from her work and her personal life, including her immigration to the United States from China at age seven, to illuminate the chapters. For instance, there's personal context in Wen's discussion of her work as commissioner of Baltimore's health department until 2018. She still lives in Baltimore, where she has been immersed in the city's day-to-day efforts to protect residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, and she explains a public health physician's struggle to balance politicians' wants with public needs. From her own childhood, Wen shares how public health policies helped (or could have helped more) her struggling immigrant family in Los Angeles during times of need. VERDICT Wen's book, combining memoir with a discussion of major public health initiatives, is a refreshing take on the topic, one that addresses racial disparities in health care and recenters the conversation on why society needs public health initiatives, not just an overview of what those initiatives might be. Recommended for readers interested in health policy.—Rachel M. Minkin, Michigan State Univ. Libs., East Lansing

Library Journal

2021-06-02
A provocative exploration of public health from an immigrant physician and expert’s point of view.

Wen arrived from China in 1990 at the age of 7. After two pleasant years in small-town Utah, where her mother was studying, the family moved to Los Angeles and fell on difficult times. No jobs existed for someone with her mother’s doctorate, and her engineer father had trouble learning English. Consequently, they remained impoverished. Despite their trying circumstances, Wen praises the support system in the U.S.—food stamps, Medicaid, free public education—without which they may not have survived. Once her mother obtained a teaching credential and her father a solid job, the family entered the middle class, allowing Wen to begin the long pursuit of becoming a doctor. Following medical school and study at Oxford after she won a Rhodes scholarship, she began her career advocating for family-centered care. Then she became health commissioner of Baltimore, serving from 2014 to 2018, followed by a year as the head of Planned Parenthood and the arrival of Covid-19, which she calls a “once-in-a-generation public health catastrophe.” Wen is at her best describing the years in Baltimore, where her idealism bumped up against politics, necessitating compromise. She writes how officials seemed willing to kill a good program rather than eliminate a single feature, but ultimately, national organizations honored her achievements. Unfortunately, Wen’s flexibility didn’t work at PP, long attacked by right-wing politicians and pundits for performing abortions (only a minor part of its health services). PP’s core supporters wanted a leader as pugnacious as their enemies, and she was forced out. At the dawn of the pandemic, she took up her present position as professor of public health at George Washington University, and even readers familiar with criticisms of the Trump administration’s sluggish response will be unsettled by the author’s detailed, well-informed condemnation of its aggressive opposition to public health basics as well as anything related to reproductive health care.

A moving account of an impressively fruitful life.

Kirkus Reviews

Until recently, I knew Dr. Leana Wen as a source of medical expertise and common sense . . . But in the pages of her new book, Lifelines, I learned about Wen’s remarkable background, and the searing experiences that drove her into public health . . . Wen's memoir is a call to action. Eventually the country will get past this virus, but Wen is right: Actually getting well is going to be a much longer project.”
—The Washington Post

“Gripping . . . a PBS-style insider account of race, politics, money and gender issues in medicine and public health . . . connected by a candid, Oprah-worthy personal narrative that at times will have you on the brink of tears.”
—Forbes

“Leana Wen’s book about her journey into the world of public health is a moving eye-opener. We follow her as she delves into the lives of the citizens that she hopes to protect; we endure her frustrations and rejoice in her victories. This book is ultimately about transformation— and Wen’s own journey is a metaphor for the long awaited transformation of public health in America. This is a must-read from one of our finest medical writers.”
—Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene

“Our best doctors aren’t created in medical school, they are born through remarkable life experiences with a desire and capacity to end the injustices others accept. Dr. Leana Wen is a public health superhero, destined to make profound changes in our world. This is her origin story.”
—Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

“Captivating, inspiring, and refreshingly honest, Lifelines takes you on an unforgettable journey to understand the power of public health to transform society. Dr. Wen's hopeful and wise account is a reminder of why she has quickly become one of America's most important physician leaders.”
—Dr. Vivek Murthy, 19th Surgeon General of the United States

“In this powerful book, Dr. Wen tells the compelling story of her journey to a career in medicine while giving a crash course in the nuts and bolts of policy and politics. Along the way, her writing will turn any reader into a believer in the power of public health and an advocate for getting off the benches and into the trenches.”
—Senator Barbara Mikulski

“With its brave candor and clarity, this book is for people who might not know all the ways in which public health has saved their lives, but they will once they've read Lifelines. It is also for all the people who do know the importance of investing in public health, of prevention and treating everyone with dignity, and who want to learn how Leana Wen has accomplished this throughout her career as a doctor, public servant, and writer.”
—Chelsea Clinton, author, advocate, and Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation

“Lifelines is a truly special book. Dr. Wen takes us with her not just on her remarkable life journey but also into an exploration of the life-and-death implications of a system that too consistently leaves people behind. Here Dr. Wen shows that she is not only one of our great medical minds—she is also one of our great storytellers and changemakers.”
—Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore and Five Days, CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation

“During the pandemic, I came to count on Dr. Leana Wen’s calm presence, tempered advice, and explanation of the science. Now that I’ve read her captivating and important Lifelines, I cannot begin to express how inspired I am by her personal journey. Many people are ambitious and smart, but few among them seek to improve life for others. Leana Wen’s empathy and concern for the world around her shines through with every word.”
—Lisa See, author of The Island of Sea Women and Shanghai Girls

“A provocative exploration of public health from an immigrant physician and expert’s point of view [and] a moving account of an impressively fruitful life.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A stirring call for greater investment in public health programs to combat racism, poverty, gun violence, and other social ills . . . Readers will be inspired by Wen’s belief in the power of public health to make America better.”
—Publishers Weekly

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