A new book by Rutgers School of Public Health Dean Perry N. Halkitis challenges how the world understands and responds to pandemics, arguing that public health failures are rooted not only in biology but in human behavior, politics and social systems.
In Humanizing Public Health: How Disease-Centered Approaches Have Failed Us, Halkitis examines lessons from the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics and calls for a fundamental shift in how public health professionals prepare for and manage global health threats.
Drawing on more than four decades of experience as an infectious disease epidemiologist and public health psychologist, Halkitis contends that modern pandemic responses have focused too narrowly on biomedical solutions while overlooking the psychological, social, structural and political forces that shape how diseases spread—the human aspects of disease and health.
“Viruses do not ‘outsmart’ us,” Halkitis writes. “Pandemics emerge because human behavior, misinformation, emotions and political dynamics allow pathogens to thrive.”
Through a deeply personal and scholarly exploration of infectious disease outbreaks, Halkitis traces the parallels between the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the COVID-19 pandemic. He also draws on this history of pathogens, including the 1918 influenza pandemic, smallpox and emerging threats such as Mpox and Bird Flu. The book examines how fear, mistrust, misinformation and political polarization can undermine even the most advanced scientific tools, and how these must be embedded in modern public health programming and replace anachronistic models of health behavior that treat humans as rational decision-makers.
Halkitis argues that future pandemic preparedness must center on people—how they think, behave and interact within communities. By integrating psychological insight with epidemiology, he proposes a biopsychosocial approach to public health that emphasizes empathy, trust-building and community engagement.
“We cannot rely solely on biomedical advances to save us,” Halkitis said. “To prevent future pandemics, we must better understand human behavior and address the social and political conditions that allow infectious diseases to spread.”
The book also highlights the need to rethink public health education and workforce development. Halkitis calls on schools of public health to train leaders who can navigate complex social environments, communicate effectively with diverse communities and address misinformation, and be trained in advocacy and activism alongside the other pillars of public health.
Humanizing Public Health builds on Halkitis’ previous books, including Out in Time: The Public Lives of Gay Men from Stonewall to the Queer Generation and The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience.
The book will be available May 5, 2026, in paperback and ebook formats from Johns Hopkins University Press.
