Sep 29, 2026 · 29 min · 9 segments
Should medicine be more broadly defined? Can an emphasis on our shared humanity lead to better treatments? And what about joy? In this episode of *Ideas Matter*, WashU’s Sandro Galea, dean of the…
Sandro GaleaHostSo the title really, for me, reflects a belief, and it also reflects a paradigm shift.
The belief is that medicine should belong to everyone, not just to the people who can afford the best health care, who can navigate a complex health system, who live in communities with abundant resources.
But it also means that we're thinking about what medicine itself actually is.
How can we expand the meaning of medicine itself? So not just limited to what happens in a clinic or in a hospital or comes from a prescription bottle, but how food can be a medicine, how movement and connection and relationships with nature and plants and cultural traditions and the feeling of belonging can also be medicine.
as well as safe housing and clean air and economic security and freedom from racism.
The title was what I framed the entire book around, Medicine for All People, because many of the practices that support healing are ancient, they're accessible, they are already present within communities.
But I want to reclaim that much broader understanding of healing that respects science, that honors traditional wisdom, that recognizes that every person deserves an opportunity to thrive and not just survive.
It invites us to imagine and create a different kind of culture of health.
I think you do a terrific job in the book of arguing about our need to expand the definition of medicine.
And in many respects, of course, that puts you squarely in the public health tradition.
Public health has long recognized that health is shaped by the conditions of the world around us.
So how does your book connect these broader determinants, the social economic determinants with the daily choices people make?
I feel like public health and, you know, the way the health care system has been designed are sort of, you know, medicine and public health are friends who are in parallel play.
You know, like they respect each other and they like to be around each other and like they like to watch each other do each other's work.
But we haven't like turned and faced each other and played together in the way that that we should be, because public health is.
So the title really, for me, reflects a belief, and it also reflects a paradigm shift.
The belief is that medicine should belong to everyone, not just to the people who can afford the best health care, who can navigate a complex health system, who live in communities with abundant resources.
But it also means that we're thinking about what medicine itself actually is.
How can we expand the meaning of medicine itself? So not just limited to what happens in a clinic or in a hospital or comes from a prescription bottle, but how food can be a medicine, how movement and connection and relationships with nature and plants and cultural traditions and the feeling of belonging can also be medicine.
as well as safe housing and clean air and economic security and freedom from racism.
The title was what I framed the entire book around, Medicine for All People, because many of the practices that support healing are ancient, they're accessible, they are already present within communities.
But I want to reclaim that much broader understanding of healing that respects science, that honors traditional wisdom, that recognizes that every person deserves an opportunity to thrive and not just survive.
It invites us to imagine and create a different kind of culture of health.
I think you do a terrific job in the book of arguing about our need to expand the definition of medicine.
And in many respects, of course, that puts you squarely in the public health tradition.
Public health has long recognized that health is shaped by the conditions of the world around us.
So how does your book connect these broader determinants, the social economic determinants with the daily choices people make?
I feel like public health and, you know, the way the health care system has been designed are sort of, you know, medicine and public health are friends who are in parallel play.
You know, like they respect each other and they like to be around each other and like they like to watch each other do each other's work.
But we haven't like turned and faced each other and played together in the way that that we should be, because public health is.
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