The Potential for Health

Kenneth C Calman

Oxford University Press, £19.99, pp 292

ISBN 0 19 262944 1

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Rating: ★

This book is much like a conversation, of the sort you have with someone you have just met at a professional meeting: a mixture of common wisdom (mostly) and new ideas (few), and, because a conversation often abruptly changes its direction, a poor organisation of the arguments.

Because Kenneth Calman was England’s chief medical officer, he has a unique experience of topics related to the practice of public health. These are the best part of the book. Particularly interesting are his ideas on communicating health related risks to the public and the chapter on the health of the nation strategy (“from health for all to health by all”). I also like his suggestion that a major aspect of medicine is to constantly redefine disease and health. He is convincing when he promotes the importance of medical humanities (although one should avoid spreading so many quotations—from T S Eliott to H Ibsen to Ecclesiast—as this gives the wrong message on why doctors should receive the best general education).

However, most subjects are only alluded to and, in general, with a rather limited insight into the problem addressed by the title of the chapter. For example, the chapter on international health is remarkably empty, and the discussion on patient choice is poor. In fact, a substantial part of this essay says that (a) life is complex, (b) medicine and public health are the most complex matters on earth, and (c) we have to cope with life anyway. Professionals will regret the very limited number of bibliographical sources (and even reference to any studies). For the lay public, this gives the misleading impression that public health is much more an art than a science, a matter of opinion rather than a discipline of observation, analysis, and action.

The best part of the book is probably the table of contents, which displays an inspired list of important issues for both the present and the future of public health. Unfortunately, the actual content is full of straightforward ideas, which do not need to be either written or read. A book dealing with the practical aspects of population health is still to be written. This book is only a potential one.