Nick Freudenberg

Nick Freudenberg discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known.

Nicholas Freudenberg is distinguished professor emeritus of public health at the City University of New York School of Public Health. His expertise includes childhood lead poisoning, AIDS prevention, urban food policy, community organization for health, and mass incarceration. Since the 1970s, Freudenberg has studied, evaluated, taught about, and participated in health activist campaigns in New York City and elsewhere. Freudenberg is the author of several books, including At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (2021), Lethal but Legal Corporation, Consumption and Protecting Public Health (2014) and Not in Our Backyards! Community Action for Health and the Environment (1984).

He was the founding director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, the CUNY Public Health Doctoral Program, and the Hunter College Center on AIDS, Drugs and Community Health.

His new book is Fighting for New York, which is available at https://cup.columbia.edu/book/fighting-for-new-york/9780231221405/.

1. Many advances in health are due to activists’ health campaigns
2. Changes in living conditions are more important than advances in medicine
3. Short-term failures in activism may turn into long-term success
4. The idea that the current situation is inevitable is the biggest threat to activism
5. Activist groups win by bringing different communities together
6. The key is to convince politicians they have more to lose by following demands of wealthier supporters

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