This month I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Keith Wailoo<\/a><\/span>, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, when he spoke at the University of Washington Medical Center, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine\u2019s annual lecture. Dr. Wailoo spoke about his book, Pain: A Political History<\/a><\/span>, giving a historical perspective of our nation\u2019s opioid epidemic. I\u2019ve talked about our work here at the Collaborative to impact opioid prescribing and why this work is so important \u2013 drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for American\u2019s under 50<\/a><\/span>. Putting today\u2019s health issues in the context of our nation\u2019s history is so valuable as we work to develop policies \u2013 and for me nothing is better than a well-told story. One of my other favorite books on opioid prescribing is Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic<\/a><\/span> by Sam Quinones. This book was so helpful to me as we started to convene our workgroups \u2013 and describes some of the early work\u00a0that inspired the Agency Medical Directors Group Interagency Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Pain<\/a><\/span> (now in its third edition).<\/p>\n While I understand that books about health policy might not be on everyone\u2019s summer reading list (but they can fit the \u201cGenre that is new to you\u201d category on the Seattle Public Library\u2019s Summer Book BINGO<\/a><\/span>) understanding these issues and knowing how and when to take action are hugely important. We all need to be advocates for our own health to our doctors, within our communities, and to our Federal government. Dr. Atul Gawande<\/a><\/span>\u2019s work should be required reading for anyone making a policy decision that can impact the relationship I have with my care team. He is a surgeon at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston, professor of public health and surgery at Harvard, and a bestselling author. Although you can\u2019t go wrong with any of his books, and I certainly recommend them all, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Righ<\/a>t<\/a><\/span>, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science<\/a><\/span>, and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End<\/a><\/span> are my top choices. Being Mortal helped me think about the type of care I would want at the end of life and was published a month before our Collaborative\u2019s End-of-Life Care Recommendations<\/a><\/span>. When Breath Becomes Air<\/a><\/span> by Dr. Paul Kalanithi is another must read and an elegant exploration about what makes life meaningful, even if much too short.<\/p>\n I also recommend The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer<\/a><\/span> by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales<\/a><\/span> by Oliver Sacks, and The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science<\/a><\/span> by Norman Doidge.<\/p>\n