America's Next 250 Years Must Be Built on Prevention, Science, and Health

As America approaches its 250th birthday, we have an opportunity to do more than celebrate our history. We have an opportunity to decide what kind of nation we want to become.

Anniversaries are not simply about looking back. They are about looking forward.

That is why I was encouraged to see Representative Debbie Dingell introduce a House resolution recognizing America's 250th anniversary while reaffirming the importance of prevention, public health, science, and access to healthcare.

I applaud Representative Dingell for reminding Congress—and the American people—that one of the greatest gifts we can leave future generations is a healthier nation.

For more than twenty years, Less Cancer has worked with physicians, researchers, nurses, universities, educators, business leaders, community organizations, and members of Congress from both political parties around a simple belief: preventing disease is one of the smartest investments a nation can make.

That belief is grounded in evidence.

Science has transformed the quality and length of our lives. Research has helped reduce tobacco use, improve cancer screening, make workplaces safer, protect drinking water, reduce environmental exposures, improve maternal and child health, and save countless lives through prevention and early detection.

These successes did not happen by accident. They happened because people were willing to invest in research, listen to evidence, and translate science into public policy that protected people.

That is a tradition worth celebrating.

The resolution also reminds us that prevention has been part of America's story from the very beginning.

When General George Washington ordered the inoculation of the Continental Army against smallpox, he understood that protecting people's health was essential to protecting the nation itself. It was a bold decision rooted in evidence, leadership, and a willingness to act for the common good.

Nearly 250 years later, that lesson remains just as important.

Healthy people build stronger communities.

Healthy communities build a stronger nation.

Prevention reduces suffering before it begins.

Access to healthcare gives people the opportunity to live longer and healthier lives.

Science provides the knowledge that allows us to make better decisions.

These are not partisan values. They are American values.

Yet today we find ourselves at a moment when evidence-based science and public health are too often questioned, weakened, or treated as optional. Investments in prevention are sometimes dismissed because their successes are quiet. When prevention works, there is no headline about the cancer that never developed, the child who never became ill, or the family spared unnecessary suffering.

But those quiet successes are among our nation's greatest achievements.

We should not be dismantling the very systems that have helped Americans live longer, healthier lives.

We should be strengthening them.

We should be expanding access to preventive care.

We should be supporting researchers whose work helps us better understand cancer and other chronic diseases.

We should be protecting the public health institutions that safeguard our air, our water, our food, and our communities.

And we should insist that public policy be informed by credible science and evidence—not ideology, misinformation, or short-term political interests.

At Less Cancer, we have always believed that education, prevention, and collaboration are more powerful than division. We have worked with unlikely partners because cancer does not ask whether someone is a Republican, Democrat, or Independent. Disease does not recognize political boundaries.

Neither should prevention.

Representative Dingell's resolution offers something our country needs more of: common ground.

It reminds us that we can celebrate America's extraordinary past while making a shared commitment to its future.

As we celebrate 250 years of our nation, let us also commit to protecting the things that truly sustain it.

Our health.

Our environment.

Our scientific institutions.

Our healthcare system.

Our commitment to evidence.

And our responsibility to future generations.

The next 250 years will not be defined by what we inherited.

They will be defined by what we chose to protect.

Healthcare is patriotism.

Prevention is patriotism.

Science is patriotism.

If we want America to be stronger in its next 250 years than it was in its first, we must stop tearing down the very science, public health, and evidence-based policies that have made healthier lives possible. Instead, we should strengthen them—for our children, our grandchildren, and every generation that follows.

This post originally appeared on Substack.