For the first time in a century, American life expectancy is declining, an unprecedented trend for a wealthy nation and one driven largely by preventable causes of early death. The foundations of public health reforms — sanitation, clean water, safe housing, pollution control, workplace safety, and more — doubled America’s life expectancy between the mid-1800s and today.
But the nation has now spent a century shifting money and attention away from public health and toward clinical medicine. The pandemic exposed the cost of that shift, including widening health inequities, inadequate emergency response coordination, and erosion of public trust.
In her book “The Cure for Everything: The Epic Struggle for Public Health and a Radical Vision for Human Thriving,” Michelle Williams tells the story of how the U.S. overcame a history of infectious disease, poisonous environments, and early death and how it’s still possible to rebalance clinical medicine and public health to prevent hundreds of thousands of annual avoidable premature deaths and improve all Americans’ quality of life.
In this webinar, Williams will talk about key lessons from her book that could inspire lines of investigation for journalists. Linda Marsa, a health journalist who helped Williams with the book, will briefly address how that collaboration worked and how journalists can mine the book for story ideas in their communities.
January 28 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Tara Haelle
AHCJ Health Beat Leader for Infectious Diseases, Medical Studies
Tara Haelle is AHCJ’s health beat leader for infectious diseases and medical studies. She’s an independent science/health journalist, author, speaker, and photographer. Her work has appeared in the National Geographic, Scientific American, Texas Monthly, Science News, Medscape/WebMD, The New York Times, Wired, and O Magazine, among others. She specializes in public health and medical research, particularly vaccines, infectious disease, maternal and pediatric health, mental health, healthcare disparities, and misinformation. She also covers medical research conferences and edits Long COVID Connection on Medium. Haelle earned a master’s in photojournalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and her images have appeared in Texas Monthly, NPR, the, Chicago Sun-Times and elsewhere.
Michelle A. Williams, ScD
Professor of epidemiology and population health, Stanford University School of Medicine
Michelle A. Williams, ScD, is a professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University School of Medicine and former Dean of the Faculty at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, where she also served as the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development and currently holds an adjunct professorship. An internationally renowned epidemiologist and award-winning educator, Dr. Williams is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. She has authored more than 550 peer-reviewed research articles and is recognized as a leading voice in public health science and global health.
Linda Marsa
Investigative journalist and author
Contributing editor, Discover
Linda Marsa is a former Los Angeles Times reporter and a Discover contributing editor who covers medicine, health, and the environment. Her latest book, which she wrote with Dr. Michelle Williams, “The Cure for Everything: The Epic Struggle for Public Health and a Radical Vision for Human Thriving,” will be published in February 2026. Her work has been anthologized in “Best American Science Writing,” and she has previously authored two books, most recently: “Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Harm Our Health and How We Can Save Ourselves.”