Every major industrial sector in the global economy is now controlled by no more than five transnational corporations. In about a third of these sectors, a single company accounted for more than 40 percent of global sales. Now comes Nicholas Freudenberg, a Professor of Public Health at the City University of New York (CUNY). He…
Tuesday, 20 April, 2021 - 12:30 to 13:30
In this talk, Nicholas Freudenberg, from the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health and Health Policy, discusses the role of 21st century capitalism in the cascade of public health crises confronting the world today and assesses the potential for various strategies to create alternative futures.
About the Speaker
Nicholas Freudenberg is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at CUNY and directs the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. He is the author of
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Dr. Nicholas Freudenberg thinks that capitalism is damaging to both human health and to the planet. And after reading his new book, At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health, it is hard to disagree. The food we eat is filled with toxins. The planet is heating up uncontrollably. And that was true long before 2020: since last year, we have learned the hard way that liberal capitalist societies like ours are barely capable of addressing their most basic responsibility, protecting public health.
Dr. Freudenberg, who is a public health professor at the City University of New York School, has written a riveting and inspiring call-to-arms. In his new book, he describes concrete ways that people can address the problems wrought by modern capitalism. Although our conversation occurred before President Joe Biden signed his COVID-19 stimulus relief package into law, it is relevant to both that event and future efforts at reform.
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A recent survey of the approximately 274,000 City University of New York (CUNY) students published in the
Journal of Urban Health found that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on their mental health and financial security.
The population-representative survey, conducted by a team of CUNY SPH faculty in collaboration with researchers at Healthy CUNY, found that more than half of CUNY students (54%) reported experiencing depression and/or anxiety in April 2020, at the height of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Further, they found disturbingly high levels of financial instability and noted that food insecurity and housing worries were strong predictors of anxiety/depression in multivariable models.