Can happiness lead toward health?
The ironic thing about modern health care is that it isn’t really about health at all, said Laura Kubzansky. It’s about disease. But the problem with a disease-focused health care system is that health is more than the absence of disease, she said. Just as disease sets in motion an array of physiological reactions, there is increasing evidence that happiness and well-being are connected to bodily processes as well. Kubzansky, the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the co-director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, made the comments Friday outside a symposium on the science of health and happiness at the New Research Building on Harvard’s Longwood campus. The event was something of an academic coming-out party for the new center, which was established earlier this year with the support of a $21 million gift from...