Why Preventing the Next Pandemic Involves Humanizing Public Health

A Rutgers dean explains why understanding people - not just pathogens - is essential

For decades, public health responses to infectious diseases have focused primarily on the biology of pathogens: how viruses spread, how vaccines work and how treatments can stop disease.

But Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, said that approach alone cannot explain why pandemics continue to devastate people and populations around the world despite our powerful biomedical advances. From HIV and AIDS to COVID-19, Halkitis said the greatest drivers of pandemics are often human: our emotions, beliefs, political systems and social conditions.

Halkitis, author of the forthcoming book Humanizing Public Health: How Disease-Centered Approaches Have Failed Us, discusses why this shift is needed as the world prepares for future health crises.

You often talk about the need to "humanize public health." What does that mean?

It means recognizing that health crises are not driven only by viruses or bacteria. They are also driven by people.

Public health has historically approached pandemics through a biomedical lens. We focus on the pathogen: how it spreads, how it mutates and how we can develop vaccines or treatments to control it. That science is essential.

But pandemics unfold within populations and the communities that constitute them. They are shaped by how people behave, what people believe, how societies function, their emotions and sadly, the decline in empathy - how we care for one another - and how we uphold our social covenant. All of this is exacerbated by false information perpetuated by anti-scientific bias, news media perpetuating false data and led by oligarchs with political agendas and how political systems respond. This is all the worse in the era of social media.

When we fail to understand the human and structural dimensions, even the most advanced scientific tools, such as messenger RNA vaccines and modern therapeutics, can fall short.

Why do you think this shift in thinking is so important right now?

The past several years have shown us the limits of purely biomedical approaches. This year's flu season - the worst in two decades - along with the approximately 30,000 new HIV infections reported annually, the continued rise in other sexually transmitted infections and ongoing deaths from COVID-19 all reinforce that biomedical tools alone are not enough.

While this year's flu vaccine was less effective at preventing infection than hoped, it still played an important role in protecting people from severe illness and hospitalization. At the same time, uptake of updated COVID-19 vaccines remains alarmingly low. Equally concerning, many of the everyday behaviors we embraced during the pandemic - staying home when sick, masking in crowded settings and frequent handwashing - are steadily declining. The politics of the moment continue to undermine prevention efforts and, in doing so, perpetuate disease.

These factors underscore a critical lesson for public health: preventing disease requires both scientific tools and thoughtful human behavior, including the actions of our political leaders.

This is a call to action: We continue to face ongoing public health challenges, including persistent HIV transmission, declining childhood vaccination rates and the emergence of new infectious disease threats.

If we want to prevent future pandemics, we must address not only the biology of disease, but also the human, social, structural, economic and political factors that enable it to spread.

How have emotions and beliefs influenced public health outcomes?

Human beings don't always make health decisions based purely on scientific evidence.

Our decisions are shaped by emotions, personal experiences, cultural norms and the political environments in which we live. Fear and mistrust can powerfully influence how people respond to public health guidance.

During COVID-19, we saw how emotions and political identity shaped responses to masking, vaccination and other preventive measures. These dynamics illustrate a critical lesson: Public health messaging cannot rely solely on information. It must also engage with the emotional and social realities that shape people's decisions.

What does a more human-centered public health approach look like?

A human-centered approach requires what many of us describe as a biopsychosocial perspective, as noted by the Venn diagram.

We must consider biological factors alongside psychological and social ones. We must understand how social inequities, economic conditions, political forces and cultural beliefs influence health behaviors.

Public health professionals must also build trust within communities. That means listening to people, understanding their concerns and working together to develop solutions that reflect their lived experiences. Public health change doesn't happen behind computers or solely by our publications in scientific journals. We must take the knowledge and translate it into action, working with the populations we study and have an obligation to serve.

When we center people in this way, we are far better equipped to prevent disease and promote health. My book describes this model, which situates public health as an equal partner with medicine and the health system.

How can public health schools help lead this transformation?

Schools of public health play a critical role in shaping the next generation of leaders. Our students must certainly learn the science of infectious diseases and epidemiology. But they must also understand the psychology of health behavior, the impact of social inequities and the importance of communication and trust-building.

Future public health professionals must be able to work across disciplines and engage with people and populations in meaningful ways. Humanizing public health begins with how we educate and train the workforce that will lead public health forward. At the Rutgers School of Public Health, we are constantly developing programs, expanding our areas of study and seeking guidance from the communities we serve.

If we want to prevent future pandemics, we must address not only the biology of disease, but also the human, social, structural, economic and political factors that enable it to spread.

Perry N. Halkitis

Dean, Rutgers School of Public Health

What gives you hope about the future of public health?

What gives me hope is that many in our field are starting to confront these challenges head-on - calling out misinformation, meeting people where they are, and rethinking what it means to train a public health professional. Our students need to understand activism and advocacy just as much as they know how to run a chi-square analysis or rely on conventional behavioral theories.

When public health truly centers people, it listens and learns, building stronger systems capable of responding to the challenges ahead.

You explore these ideas more deeply in your recent book. Can you tell us more about it?

Humanizing Public Healthexamines lessons from the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics and offers a vision for a more holistic approach to public health.

Ultimately, humanizing public health means remembering something simple: the success of public health depends on the people it serves.