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health equity

concept · in 57 videos (2017–2026)

John argues the growing within-country inequality of life expectancy in the US is not normal, natural or acceptable.

Videos by year: 2017: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2023: 18 · 2024: 7 · 2025: 10 · 2026: 8

Also known as: health inequality, inequality of life expectancy, health disparities

Threads

Also named in the threads: John asks viewers to donate to Partners In Health at pih.org/hankandjohn (2019) · John reads widely about tuberculosis and 19th-century illness (2022) · Partners In Health's comprehensive TB care project in Lesotho (search, treat, prevent), backed by Keats & Co. (2024)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

tuberculosis (27) · Hodgkin lymphoma (8) · Partners In Health (10) · global health (5) · Sierra Leone (9) · maternal death (6) · Everything Is Tuberculosis (5) · cancer (6) · Maternal Center of Excellence (5) · chemotherapy (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2017

  • 2017-05-09 · Your Neighborhood, Your Life Expectancy — John sums up that the longevity gap between rich and poor in the US is real and very high by international standards. — video description
    • John says recent research shows the gap between the healthiest and the sickest communities is getting bigger. — 00:00:21
    • John says growing within-country inequality of life expectancy is not the norm: it has risen steadily in the US since 1980 but declined in most other rich countries. — 00:02:23
    • John says the growing life expectancy discrepancy is not normal or natural; we need not accept lifespan varying by where you live, yet in the US it is getting worse. — 00:03:05

2018

  • 2018-01-23 · On Emergencies — John is totally unconvinced that these problems are not our problems or that Sierra Leone's health system should be fixed entirely within Sierra Leone. — 00:01:29
  • 2018-11-27 · On The Melian Dialogue — John says those children did not really die of malaria, usually treatable with more robust health systems, but because the weak suffer what they must. (hedged) — 00:02:26

2019

  • 2019-10-22 · Why We're Donating $6,500,000 — John says it is unacceptable that thousands of women will die in childbirth in Sierra Leone this year (2019) and thousands more of treatable illnesses, and we don't have to accept it. — 00:07:13

2020

  • 2020-01-28 · Looking Away (Again) — John says most mothers who die in childbirth there die for want of an ambulance ride, a blood transfusion or an emergency C-section: these deaths are preventable and have been for decades. — 00:02:20
  • 2020-04-10 · Things I'm Finding Encouraging — Hank stresses this is not good: it is bad, beyond the illness and loss of life, in the inequity of how it is hitting and will hit people. — 00:02:34
    • Hank says the economic fallout is going to hit very unevenly. — 00:02:40
  • 2020-11-17 · Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update — John: Almost all of those deaths are preventable with a strong health system: women die every day for want of an emergency C-section, a blood transfusion or blood pressure medication. — 00:01:27
  • 2020-11-24 · personal risk · societal risk — John: Infectious disease never treats people equally because social orders don't; in the US mortality is far higher among people of color. — 00:00:29

2021

  • 2021-02-02 · I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again) — John: Disease does not treat people equally because social orders don't; unless unequal access to health care is addressed, pandemics will stay routine and keep harming the most vulnerable most. — 00:02:26
    • We also choose to accept a world where, on average, the poorest people die 30 years before the richest. — 00:03:24
  • 2021-02-12 · Doing Better — Hank says access to food, water, health care, housing and education should be fair, and it is not. — 00:00:28

2022

  • 2022-01-04 · After 15 Years on YouTube, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING — John says the Kayima clinic's conditions dramatically increase the risks for mother and child, and it simply doesn't have to be this way. — 00:07:01
  • 2022-02-22 · On the Death of My Hero — John: Child and maternal mortality are the lowest in human history and health systems are strengthening even in very poor communities, but profound health inequities persist. — 00:02:55
    • Paul was never satisfied with progress amid such injustice and we shouldn't be either: health-care access and justice cannot wait, and his partners will carry his legacy forward. — 00:02:55
  • 2022-05-17 · Reasons Not to Care — John says health disparities are driven not by personal choices or values but by inequity and injustice. — 00:02:26
    • John says the question is not whether someone should have expected a pregnancy but whether someone should be able to expect to survive pregnancy. — 00:02:55
  • 2022-06-21 · On Disease — John says there is nothing natural about people dying of cholera in Haiti but not in the United States. — 00:01:56
    • John says poor people in the United States are almost twice as likely as rich people to develop heart disease. — 00:01:56
    • John says examining how we imagine illness is productive because so much illness is caused not by bacteria or viruses but by poverty, lack of clean water and other human-built systems. — 00:03:24

2023

2024

  • 2024-01-16 · The Bank of Nerdfighteria — John: Supposing Nerdfighteria's share of that change were 20%, John reckons advocacy created a bigger financial win for global health equity than Good Store and the Project for Awesome combined. (speculative) — 00:04:42
  • 2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says we can't afford not to implement comprehensive STP strategies in high-burden communities: there is no excuse for over a million people a year dying of a curable disease. — 00:03:21
  • 2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John says comprehensive care has long been seen as too expensive or complicated for poor countries, an insane situation where a TB cure exists but doesn't reach the places it is needed. — 00:00:58
  • 2024-06-18 · The Tea — John says there are many examples of failing to keep up or follow through with commitments in global health and equity, and he wants to be conscious of that. — 00:02:26
    • John doesn't want to undermine the Sierra Leone maternal work, but PIH calls comprehensive TB care the next big thing in global health equity. — 00:05:21
    • John finds it infuriating that the world's deadliest infectious disease still kills over a million people a year though curable. — 00:05:21
  • 2024-10-22 · My New Book: Everything Is Tuberculosis — John says tuberculosis has been curable since the 1950s, yet over a million people die every year of a disease we know how to prevent and cure, which he calls insane. — 00:00:58
    • John says we in turn have shaped TB, because the disease follows the trails of injustice that we blazed for it. — 00:02:15
  • 2024-10-25 · I Don't Want them to Get Away With It… — Hank says people dying of undiagnosed cancer for lack of a test doesn't have to be this way. — 00:03:24
  • 2024-10-30 · Sipping the Tea with Hank — John: Answering a viewer who asks them to punch tuberculosis in the face, John says that if there were a lot of tuberculosis in the US, it would be dealt with. — 00:09:35

2025

  • 2025-02-25 · EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS — John says we know how to live in a world without tuberculosis, but we choose not to. — 00:05:43
    • John says the same holds for TB: this year (2025) thousands of doctors will be unable to save millions of patients because the cure is where the disease is not. — 00:06:20
  • 2025-03-25 · Taylor, Dr Pepper, and My Anxiety Strats: It's Question Tuesday — John recalls that when Hank got Hodgkin lymphoma he said it has a 93% cure rate for those who can access treatment and a 20-70% cure rate in low- and middle-income countries. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-04-15 · Chatting with ... a U.S. Senator? — John says that because TB has been curable since the 1950s, its cause can no longer really be said to be Mycobacterium tuberculosis; on some level the cause is us. — 00:20:07
  • 2025-05-06 · Health CARE: Thoughts from Lima — John says TB and other diseases of injustice do not strike randomly: they follow the paths of injustice and inequity that humans blaze. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-10-28 · Elon Cancelled This...Let's Do it Anyway — John says Guimaras is not a special hotspot: TB is rampant throughout much of the world even though we know how to cure it. — 00:03:24
  • 2025-11-04 · The Real Question — Replying to Hank, John says his tuberculosis obsession is a path into a larger obsession he has had since being a hospital chaplain: why suffering is so unjustly distributed and what human-built systems can do about it. — 00:00:00
  • 2025-11-10 · My Cancer Treatment was Not Cutting Edge — Hank: The second component is how justly or unjustly those tools are distributed, from tuberculosis to cancer treatment to new ways to unblock blocked blood vessels. — 00:04:50
  • 2025-11-11 · John's Annual Psychophysical Decline — ask: John: Asked how best to support Partners In Health, John says by far the best way is a monthly or one-time donation at pih.org, or pih.org/hankandjohn for the MCOE specifically. — 00:02:35
    • John says over a million people die every year from tuberculosis, though almost all could be saved by a drug regimen costing less than $300, which he calls bonkers. — 00:02:35
  • 2025-11-13 · Fighting TB in Kids: A Discussion with Doctors without Borders — John says in the US he would be offered TPT without problem if a relative got TB, but not in many high-burden countries like Indonesia, which reveals problems we face as a world. — 00:10:49
  • 2025-11-25 · Poverty Is Expensive — John says TB persists partly because it is hard to cure but mostly because we've failed to build systems that treat all human beings as equal, as Isatu's absence reminded him. — 00:05:50
  • …and 8 statements more in 2025 — all statements of 2025

2026

  • 2026-02-14 · Project for Awesome 2026 part 3! — John thinks people who want to live forever are confused about what it would mean: with health-care injustice already so bad, some living forever while others die at 80 would be far worse. — 00:55:27
  • 2026-02-24 · Risk Is a Privilege — John calls this unconscionable and unacceptable, but says addressing the crisis is risky. — 00:03:24
  • 2026-03-17 · Tuberculosis and Hank's Shingles — John says the story shows the strange incentives in creating vaccines for poor countries' diseases when they conflict with health problems of wealthy countries, whose governments can spend lots on vaccines. — 00:02:26
  • 2026-03-24 · How Panda Express Is Tuberculosis — John says tuberculosis has been curable since the 1950s but still kills over a million people a year because of failures of human-built systems. — 00:00:00
  • 2026-04-28 · What I Can't Show You — John calls it a blessing to stand at a world-class facility in a place too long deemed unworthy of one, knowing the community fought to build it and will fight to maintain it. — 00:06:05
  • 2026-05-05 · Noted Brother Hank Green — John says he is incredibly fortunate to glimpse up close the effects of radical health care and education inequity because he gets to travel all over the world. — 00:02:36
  • 2026-05-08 · My Deathday — Hank: Thinking about health equity, Hank checked his odds as the average person on Earth, expecting very bad news; the survival figure was much higher than he assumed. — 00:03:24
    • Hank notes that health care is not equally distributed: some places have much higher Hodgkin death rates, and in some diagnosis is unlikely. — 00:04:22
  • 2026-09-08 · The Life Expectancy Lies That Won't Die — John says those benefits have been unjustly distributed. — 00:04:52