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Twenty Years of Life

Why the Poor Die Earlier and How to Challenge Inequity

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Suzanne Bohan

    1. Mill Valley, USA

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  • Exposes the true cause of America’s vast health disparities
  • Presents a promising new model for community change
  • Tells uplifting stories of personal empowerment

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. How Neighborhoods Kill

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 1-17

  3. The Stress Effect

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 19-36

  4. Keeping Kids in School

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 37-55

  5. Changing Schools’ Rules

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 57-74

  6. A Safe Place to Play

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 75-99

  7. A Safe Place to Live

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 101-127

  8. Rural Activism

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 129-151

  9. Good Eats

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 153-174

  10. Healing Trauma

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 175-196

  11. Red and Blue Visions of Health

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 197-208

  12. Epilogue

    • Suzanne Bohan
    Pages 209-214

  13. Back Matter

    Pages 215-253
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Keywords

About this book

In Twenty Years of Life, Suzanne Bohan exposes the ugly truth that health is largely determined by zip code. Life expectancies in wealthy versus poor neighborhoods can vary by as much as twenty years.

Bohan chronicles a bold experiment to challenge that inequity. The California Endowment, one of the nation’s largest health foundations, is upending the old‑school, top‑down charity model and investing $1 billion over ten years to help distressed communities advocate for their own interests.

With compassion and insight, Bohan shares stories of students and parents, former street shooters, urban farmers, and a Native American tribe who are tapping into their latent political power to make their neighborhoods healthier. Their stories will fundamentally change how we think about the root causes of disease and the prospects for healing. 

Authors and Affiliations

  • Mill Valley, USA

    Suzanne Bohan

About the author

Suzanne Bohan covered health and science for 12 years with the Bay Area News Group, a 650,000-circulation newspaper chain that includes the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, and Oakland Tribune. She previously worked for the Sacramento Bee, and her writing has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and other newspapers nationwide.
Bohan has won nearly 20 journalism awards, including the 2010 White House Correspondents' Association Edgar A. Poe Award for the series "Shortened Lives: Where You Live Matters" on why life expectancies vary so dramatically between nearby neighborhoods, and initiatives to shrink this unjust gap. Her earlier book, 50 Simple Ways to Live a Longer Life: Everyday Techniques From the Forefront of Science, won a National Health Information Award for health promotion/diseaseprevention.

Bohan has a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in biology from San Francisco State University. She interned at CNN and worked in radio but decided to focus her career on print media. She lives in Northern California with her husband.

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