Prevention First: Policymaking for a Healthier America

Deaths from preventable diseases have decreased life expectancy in the United States for the first time in a century, making it clear that we must deal with the crisis by embracing prevention as our nation’s top health sector priority.

In Prevention First, Dr. Anand K. Parekh, chief medical advisor of the Bipartisan Policy Center, argues that disease prevention must be our nation’s top health policy priority. Building a personal culture of prevention, he writes, is not enough; elected officials and policymakers must play a greater role in reducing preventable deaths. This second edition includes important new developments in health policy, including US responses to and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and the addition of learning objectives and key takeaways in each chapter to aid students and faculty.

Drawing on his experiences as a clinician, public servant, and policy advisor, Dr. Parekh provides examples of prevention in action from across the country, giving readers a view into why prevention-first policies are important and how they can be accomplished. Throughout the book, he demonstrates that, in order to optimize health in America, we must leverage health insurance programs to promote disease prevention, expand primary care, attend to the social determinants of health, support making the healthier choice the easy choice for individuals, and increase public health investments.

Providing concrete steps that federal policymakers should take to promote prevention both within and outside our healthcare sector, Prevention First not only sounds the alarm about the terrible consequences of preventable disease but serves as a rallying cry that we can and must do better in this country to reduce preventable deaths.

Anand K. Parekh, MD, MPH, a board-certified internal medicine physician, is the chief medical advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Previously, he completed a decade of service at the US Department of Health and Human Services. As a deputy assistant secretary for health from 2008 to 2015, he developed and implemented national initiatives focused on prevention, wellness, and care management.