Susan Sontag Quotes

There's this narrative that is entrenched in some of the professions that there's this mysterious thing called 'socioeconomic status' that is immutably correlated with health. And it isn't.

Low socioeconomic status carries with it an enormously increased risk of a broad range of diseases, and this gradient cannot be fully explained by factors such as health-care access.

I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.

Who is affected more when it's cold? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's hot? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's wet? Poor people. Who is most affected when the economy is bad? Poor people. Poor people are the most fragile.

AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.

Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti.

People talk about the redistribution of wealth a lot, which is a very valid topic. But what about the redistribution of health? That's even more concentrated at the top.

I've always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots, maybe because that's who I was.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

It so happens, in Malaysia, the people who are in a way not doing as well constitute the majority of the people - the Bumiputeras.

Things like depression and obesity are global challenges.

Without equity, pandemic battles will fail. Viruses will simply recirculate, and perhaps undergo mutations or changes that render vaccines useless, passing through the unprotected populations of the planet.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health, which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.

Creative new health strategies like micro-insurance for poor people or Kangaroo care for pre-term babies are transforming health outcomes in even the most low-resource settings. Dedication and innovation are transforming health care worldwide.

Those born into poverty or on the margins of society require our extra support to realize their dreams.

Just because you are poor and have no voice does not mean that you don’t deserve police protection.

Unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of disease, especially communicable disease, is a common danger.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged

The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.

In the developed world, income inequality within the country is the most important determinant of health standards and life expectancy.

Epidemics, like disasters, have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.

Kids from financially distressed households are twice as likely to have to repeat a grade and more than two-and-a-half more times to struggle with poor health later in life.

When I go to my constituency - in fact, when I walk around - you can almost now tell somebody's background by their weight.

Right after undergrad, I started doing low-level work on health issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and what struck me was the disconnect between how people in New York would speak about some of the issues people were facing. At the time, 2006-ish, there were a number of big media campaigns to raise awareness about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.