Celina Su – författare

A bold vision that empowers communities to solve our cities’ most pressing problemsAmid political repression and a deepening affordability crisis, Budget Justice challenges everything you thought you knew about “dull” and daunting government budgets. It shows how the latter confuse and mislead the public by design, not accident. Arguing that they are moral documents that demand grassroots participation to truly work for everyone, the book reveals how everyday citizens can shape policy to tackle everything from rising housing and food costs to unabated police violence, underfunded schools, and climate change–driven floods and wildfires.Drawing on her years of engagement with democratic governance in New York City and around the globe, Celina Su proposes a new kind of democracy—in which city residents make collective decisions about public needs through processes like participatory budgeting, and in which they work across racial divides and segregated spaces as neighbors rather than as consumers or members of voting blocs. Su presents a series of “interludes” that vividly illustrate how budget justice plays out on the ground, including in-depth interviews with activists from Porto Alegre, Brazil, Barcelona, Spain, and Jackson, Mississippi, and shares her own personal reflections on how changing social identities inform one’s activism.Essential reading to empower citizens, Budget Justice explains why public budgets reflect a crisis not so much in accounting as in democracy, and enables everyone, especially those from historically marginalized communities, to imagine and enact people’s budgets and policies—from universal preschool to affordable housing—that will enable their communities to thrive.

Introducing Global Health: Practice, Policy, and Solutions is a contemporary overview of the major issues in global public health. The book explores how population health might be maximized with the right blend of health system, education, antipoverty, infectious disease, urban development, governance, and incentive-based policies. It covers topics critical for understanding the state of the world today, including wars for natural resources, the missing women phenomenon, and whether global aid really works. The book''s case studies focus on developing economies, mixed economies, and new emerging superpowers. Thematic chapters are interwoven with running motifs, such as the health risks and benefits associated with different totalitarian, capitalist, and market socialist economies. Moving beyond statistics, the book represents a major innovation in the teaching of global health by presenting technical concepts including the incidence and prevalence of disease within the context of more accessible topics such as global poverty. This helps students contextualize otherwise challenging but critical concepts, such as the burden of infectious disease.

By encouraging reflection, focusing on what works, and using activities and exercises, Introducing Global Health both teaches fundamentals of global public health and cultivates a policy perspective that is appealing and compelling for today''s students.