This book explores the health crisis in America.

In the United States we spend trillions of dollars on healthcare but we are at the bottom when compared to other developed countries on measures of population health such as life expectancy, infant mortality and maternal mortality. Research has shown that poor health in this country is due to the lack of focus on the social determinants of health which has been shown to play a major role in disease development.

My mission is to change the narrative about health and well being in this country. Move from thinking about disease treatment to disease prevention. When you get sick, you should think about your socioeconomic environment and the systems that dictate the distribution of resources and services. This is a wake up call: understanding that your ZIP code may be more dangerous than your genetic code and knowing what you can do to intervene.

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, I’ve done everything right – followed the doctor’s order, taken medication as prescribed, tried to live a healthy life … and yet something still feels off. 

Here’s the hard truth: the real cause of our health crisis isn’t in the doctor’s office. It’s in our streets, our histories, our policies. 

There is unemployment, unstable housing, poverty, unsafe neighborhoods and intergenerational trauma. People carry around more stress, more grief, and are subject to more chronic disease.

However the policies ignore the root cause or the upstream determinants of disease therefore we treat symptoms not systems.

If you’ve ever felt that the system was broken—this book confirms it. But more importantly, it offers a way to fix it.

I’m Dr. Leslie Bronner. As a physician, I was trained to treat individual symptoms. As a public health professional, I learned to look upstream.

In America’s Health Crisis: The Community is Now the Patient, I walk you through the journey that transformed my understanding of health—from isolated, symptom-based care to a holistic, justice-centered model rooted in prevention, equity, and community healing. In this book I introduce bold ideas, evidence based solutions that shift the focus from the individual to the collective. 

This book is written in 3 parts, with the underlying premise, that it is the intergenerational cycle of poor health, within the context of the unjust distribution of resources that is at the foundation of disease and discontent in this country. 

• Part one, describes the problem of worsening health, in a wealthy country that spends more on healthcare than any other developed country in the world. 
• Part two, examines the stress from living under adverse social conditions and the unhealthy social connections that are formed, being at the crux of the problem.
• Part three, offers a solution by suggesting that the community is the patient not the individual person. 

From health systems and smaller provider groups, to the political landscape, there has to be a focus on identifying unhealthy communities and making sure there is a just distribution of resources and opportunities in order to solve this problem. 

You are not broken. The system is. But together, we can repair it.

This book is for healthcare workers, caregivers, community leaders, educators, activists—and anyone who’s ever wondered why doing “everything right” still doesn’t make us well.

If you believe healing must start with justice, then this book is for you.

Preorder now and join a movement to reclaim our health—one community at a time.

Support the book. Spark the movement. Preorder now and help rewrite the future of public health.

More About the Author: 

My name is Dr Leslie Bronner and I have been working in psychiatry and public health for over 30 years.

I started my career in public health receiving my masters in public health and doctorate in public health epidemiology. I subsequently attended medical school initially to focus on general medicine or cardiology. However after my psychiatry rotation, I committed to a residency in psychiatry because of the emphasis on the full biological, psychological and social aspects of a patient’s presentation which harkened back to my time in graduate school where I learned that the social factors were important in disease development.

I have worked in most areas of psychiatry including the VAMC, state hospital, community mental health and the emergency room. I currently work in the inpatient psychiatry unit.

Over the past several years,  I have been very frustrated in my work due to the increased patient length of stay and rate of rehospitalizations. I often feel like I’m putting a bandaid on people’s health problems.

I decided to write this book not because the treatment failed but because the system was not able to address what made them sick in the first place. This has caused me to return to my roots, to realize that all of the work that I had done in public health, studying the relationship between social factors and health, is indeed at the crux of people’s health problems.

Now I have come full circle, this time from the clinical side, where I see first hand, the impact of social factors on individual health.

📚 MORE ABOUT MY JOURNEY