Investing in Health and Wellbeing: When Prevention is Better than Cure

The proverbial benefits of prevention over cure are self-evident and yet we are reluctant to invest in protecting and improving our health.Resolution of this age-old dilemma begins with a timeless truth: the benefits of good health come at a cost; prevention is not better than cure at any price. Protecting health should be appealing when a high-risk, high-value hazard can be averted rapidly, with certainty, and at relatively low cost.Similar reasoning applies when the goal is to make health gains, not merely to avoid health losses.Health choices are rational, based on values that are personal. Investing in Health and Wellbeing: When Prevention Is Better than Cure, Second Edition provides a framework to promote and protect health as an asset, illustrating the principles with practical examples.Application of these ideas helps to explain why prevention is a low priority for health services, why the world was not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic, why deadly infections like tuberculosis are