The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives--Including Your Own

by Tom Frieden

The formula to stop invisible killers—an approach that can protect your health and prevent the next pandemic—from one of the most influential public health leaders in the US.

In The Formula for Better Health, Tom Frieden—named “the most influential leader in American public health since C. Everett Koop” by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg—reveals how to defeat the world’s deadliest diseases.

Drawing from decades leading New York City’s health department after 9/11, directing the CDC during the Ebola epidemic, and fighting tuberculosis and other lethal threats in India and around the world, Frieden combines compelling stories with insider knowledge to show how to win the battle for health.

In this book, you will step into laboratories that solve mysteries and expose deadly deceptions. You’ll meet a trailblazing epidemiologist who survived a Nazi concentration camp, a 17th-century cloth merchant who discovered public health’s superpower, and a brilliant Irish doctor knighted for unlocking the cure for tuberculosis. You’ll also learn how disease detectives ended America’s largest outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis, what caused the deadliest mistake during the Covid pandemic, and why we ignore fatal warnings. Most importantly, you’ll find out how to stop today's leading killers.

Drawing from real-world successes and failures, The Formula for Better Health bridges the lethal gap between scientific knowledge and life-saving action. Whether you want to protect your own health, safeguard your community, or solve seemingly impossible health challenges—or all three—this book offers realistic hope and a clear path to a healthier future.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Science, Medicine

288 pages, Hardcover

Published September 30, 2025

About the author

Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, is a physician and public health leader who has fought disease and saved lives in the United States and globally. He led New York City’s tuberculosis control program and served as Health Commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg before directing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he helped stop the West Africa Ebola epidemic and advanced responses to H1N1, Zika, the opioid epidemic, and other threats. He is currently President and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, which partners with countries to scale up proven solutions to the world's deadliest problems. His book, The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives—Including Your Own, distills decades of experience into a powerful framework for protecting health at every level—from personal habits to global systems.

Reviews

[Ethan Pastor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book went hard. Tom Frieden explains that if we want public health efforts to succeed, we need to implement a three step plan he refers to as “see/believe/create”. The “see” step involves making health issues visible. This could mean making people aware of the dangers of hypertension, which kills more people prematurely than any other health condition. This could also look like publicizing negative health results that tobacco or junk food companies try to obscure through their own faulty studies and marketing. The “believe” step involves making people believe that change is possible, since one of the biggest drivers is the illusion that a disease or health outcome is inevitable. Convincing people that things like high blood pressure or cancer are not inevitable parts of life can help prevent nicotine and alcohol addiction and make people feel more in control of their lives. Making people believe starts with recognizing past public health successes and finding leaders and government officials who are open to the possibility of change. Finally, “create” refers to enacting new procedures to promote public health. For these efforts to succeed, there are many factors that need to be present. Protocols should be simple, for example when dealing with deadly diseases, if a recovery plan is too complex or expensive it will be impossible to scale. Protocols should also involve great communication, because if information like patient data is not stored and tracked properly, patients can fall through the cracks and end up forgotten. Finally we always must understand that public health efforts to control large issues such as pandemics are always based on the most up to date knowledge we have. Just because a disease has not spread widely yet doesn’t mean CDC recommendations should be ignored until things get bad. Frieden uses California’s COVID response vs. Nee York’s and illustrates that waiting for people to start dying, in the case of New York’s response, can lead to many times more avoidable deaths. It can be hard to visualize public health wins, since often improvements in health only reveal themselves over long time periods, compared to the losses in industries such as tobacco and soda which actively lose money from you being healthier and benefit from creating barriers to better health.

Frieden is also blatantly aura farming sometimes talkin bout some “doctors save a couple people, public health workers save millions”, but he still wrote a good book :)

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book left me feeling proud and excited to work in Public Health.
The author, a former head of the New York City Health Department, shares his extensive experience with refreshing humility. At first, I was concerned the formula might oversimplify complicated problems, but I shouldn't have worried; he soon delves into the scientific uncertainty and political hurdles inherent in the work. His candid descriptions of what he learned from getting things both right and wrong were compelling. This is not a self-aggrandizing memoir; instead, it feels like a clear-eyed account of a journey in public service. I could feel his deep respect for the work of public health professionals and his clear explanation of why we are often undervalued by society.
I also took away some excellent management lessons, such as the importance of celebrating and learning from both wins and failures, as well as the necessity of carving out time for important but non-urgent tasks.
The book is structured in a way that offers lessons applicable to both work and life. The early chapters provided professional insights, while the final chapter focused on utilizing the best available evidence to increase our expected years of healthy life. He clearly differentiates between lifestyle changes that have been proven to reduce risks and those that are only likely or suspected to be beneficial. This chapter reminded me that I’m already following many best practices: not smoking, engaging in vigorous exercise (helmet on!), cooking, trying to nurture my social network and family ties, staying on top of my medical care, and prioritizing getting enough sleep. It also served as an evidence-based reminder that levels of alcohol consumption that are socially acceptable in the US can still carry significant health risks.

[Haley Cionfolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The road to public health failure is paved with naïveté.”

WOW. I just finished this book, and it left a lasting impression.

Dr. Frieden masterfully weaves memoir, public health history, and health education into a narrative that feels both deeply personal and urgently relevant. Through reflections on his own career, the work of unsung heroes, and the moments and evidence that have shaped major public health turning points, he shows not just what changed—but why it mattered.

As an early-career public health professional, the takeaways are both practical and grounding. From navigating public health conversations in an increasingly politicized landscape, to modeling professional humility in a field so often labeled “divisive,” to the fundamentals of organization and leadership—this book offers lessons that feel immediately applicable. Even when confronting the field at its most challenging moments, Dr. Frieden maintains a tone of clear-eyed optimism, never losing sight of the reality that progress is hard-won and fragile. As he reminds us, progress is not inevitable.

At its core, this book reads like a persuasive essay—or perhaps a warning shot. It makes a compelling case for why public health matters, and what we stand to lose when its power is undermined by polarization, misinformation, and misplaced confidence. The message is unmistakable: complacency is not neutral, and naïveté carries consequences.

This is not just a reflection on the past—it’s a call to attention for the future of public health.

[Blake Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Frieden’s The Formula for Better Health breaks down a simple but powerful framework: See. Believe. Create.

It’s a roadmap to saving lives both globally and personally by uncovering hidden health threats, challenging fatalism, and scaling real solutions that prevent disease, extend life, and build stronger communities.

By reading this, you’ll learn how to recognize the invisible health risks that quietly shorten lives, like high blood pressure or environmental toxins. You’ll understand why society often ignores clear warnings and how to break through those blind spots. Frieden shows how scalable, practical approaches like tobacco control and blood pressure management can transform both public health and your own daily habits.

If you care about health and want to live longer, healthier, and with fewer preventable risks, this book is a must-read.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr Frieden provides a solid framework for better health for the population as well as the individual. See, make the invisible visible, or call out the health challenge. Believe, a notion that the health challenge can be overcome. Create, an action plan to make progress . Make healthy choices the default through policies and incentives, add positive behaviors to your routine etc. it’s an optimistic book that we have made tremendous progress and we are living in a time where we have and can achieve much more .

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

If the title left off the "Including Your Own" I may have rated this two stars instead of one. Most of the book is the author bragging about defeating tuberculosis and ebola. It has one chapter about personal health, most of which is non-specific advice. Save money and time by finding other books about action one can take to improve their own health.

[Mark Shepherd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The information in here was great. It gets a bit scientific, but through good explanations and repetition, Dr. Frieden makes some great points. I think this knowledge will help me make smarter decisions for my own health and understand what are leaders are doing well and not doing as well.