How do timing, circumstance, and luck affect health and health care?

Harvard Medical School physician–economist Anupam (Bapu) Jena and HMS pulmonologist and health care policy researcher Christopher Worsham delve into the underappreciated impact of coincidence on health care — and discuss what patients and practitioners alike can learn from it — in their book Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health.

The book offers case studies drawn from natural experiments: random events that create study-like scenarios. The authors’ analyses illuminate how to extract useful data from such events and use the resulting insights to improve the practice of medicine.

Learn more in this episode of The Written Word from Harvard Medicine magazine: https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/arti...