Why Are Social Networks Important to Healthcare?

Why Are Social Networks Important to Healthcare? (0:41)

Any fundamental understanding of human health has to start with the fact that we are all connected. In this video, HealthMaker James Fowler, PhD, professor of medical genetics and political science at UCSD, explains why.

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You have to start out with where we came from as a species work extremely different from other species even other social species like honey bees and other primates. We interact with other people that we're not related to and that are not our mates, interact with strangers all the time everyday.

We pay attention to them their behavior is extremely contagious there is a wide range of studies that I have done with my colleague Nicholas Christakis to show that how much we weigh, how much we drink, how much we smoke, how happy we feel a wide variety of really important outcomes spread from person to person to person and networks, that's why I think any fundamental understanding of human health as a start with an understanding that we're all connected.