WHY ARE AMERICANS SICKER-AND DYING FASTER-THAN PEOPLE IN OTHER WEALTHY COUNTRIES?
The United States spends more on healthcare than any developed nation on earth. Yet when measured against peer countries on life expectancy, infant mortality, and maternal mortality, America consistently ranks at the bottom. Over 40,000 Americans die from gun violence each year. Teen obesity has climbed for decades. Maternal and infant mortality rates are highest among communities of color. And rehospitalization rates continue to rise-not because treatments fail, but because the social conditions that made people sick in the first place go untouched.
Dr. Leslie Bronner, a psychiatrist and public health professional with more than twenty years of frontline clinical experience, has witnessed this crisis firsthand. In psychiatric inpatient units, emergency departments, community health centers, and VA hospitals, she has seen the same patients return again and again-not because the medicine failed, but because the system was never designed to address what actually made them sick.
The answer, she argues, is not more clinics or more prescriptions.
The answer is the community.
In America's Health: The Community Is Now the Patient, Dr. Bronner delivers a bold, evidence-based call to action grounded in both clinical psychiatry and public health research. Drawing on epidemiology, stress science, attachment theory, and the political determinants of health, she shows why your zip code has a greater impact on your health than your genetic code-and what we must do about it.
"Dr. Bronner gives us a comprehensive and realistic view of the social determinants of health. The book takes us on an educational journey and provides context with a clear understanding. A must-read!" - Valda Chauncey, Retired Healthcare Industry
"Drawn from decades of practice, this book is all at once a lesson, diagnosis, and a prescription for a healthier America... Her work is a blueprint for a healthier America." - Carole Hopson, Boeing 737 Captain and Author of A Pair of Wings
The book unfolds in three powerful parts: Part I exposes the scope of the problem-how America's worsening health outcomes are directly tied to the neglect of the social determinants of health (SDOH), including unstable housing, food insecurity, poverty, and unequal access to quality education. Part II explores the science of why adverse social conditions cause disease, covering the biology of chronic stress, early childhood attachment, and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Part III delivers the solution-a transformative, community-centered model that deploys community health workers as a dedicated, sustainable workforce to address the SDOH from inside the neighborhoods they serve.
Through patient stories, community case studies, and immediate calls to action, Dr. Bronner makes complex public health concepts accessible to every reader-from healthcare providers and policymakers to parents and concerned citizens.
This book matters because the solution has always been hiding in plain sight-in our communities, our policies, and our collective will to act.
Stop waiting for a healthier America to happen to you. Order America's Health today-and join the movement to make your community the cure.
