Solve the Problem

As long as we have freedom of choice over what we eat, how much we exercise and a thousand other decisions, we should neither expect nor desire equality of behavior-driven health outcomes.

In a Michael Douglas film in 1994, Disclosure, he plays a male employee who is sexually harassed by his boss who tries to get rid of him by accusing him of sexual harassment to cover up a mistake she made. He gets continual emails from an unknown person who tells him that the answer is to “solve the problem,” in this case a production problem caused by his boss.

His problem at its base isn’t being wrongly accused of sexual harassment, it’s solving the production problem and being able to prove she is responsible. Far too much of the public health literature focuses on who has the problem instead of solving the problem. 

Read the full piece on my Substack here.